Becker's Hospital Review

80 CMO / CARE DELIVERY Physicians: 20.6% of Medical Treatment is Unnecessary & 4 More Survey Findings By Anuja Vaidya A ccording to physicians, over- treatment is common and fear of malpractice lawsuits is over- whelmingly cited as the reason why, a study published in Plos One shows. Researchers surveyed 2,106 physi- cians from the American Medical As- sociation masterfile. They questioned the physicians about the extent of overutilization, as well as causes, solu- tions and implications. The response rate was 70.1 percent. Here are five findings. 1. Physicians reported an "interpolat- ed median" of 20.6 percent of overall medical care was unnecessary. 2. Unnecessary medical care included 22 percent of prescription medica- tions, 24.9 percent of tests and 11.1 percent of procedures. 3. The most commonly cited reasons for overtreatment were: • Fear of malpractice suits: 84.7 percent • Patient pressure/requests: 59 percent • Difficulty accessing medical re- cords: 38.2 percent 4. Physicians identified the following potential solutions: • Training residents on appropri- ateness criteria: 55.2 percent • Enabling easy access to outside health records: 52 percent • Developing more practice guidelines: 51.5 percent 5. Around 70.8 percent of respon- dents believed physicians are more likely to perform unnecessary proce- dures when they profit from them. n National Quality Forum's New Roadmap Aims to Minimize Healthcare Disparities By Anuja Vaidya The National Quality Forum released a roadmap for healthcare stakeholders, which is designed to help them eliminate healthcare disparities. The roadmap focuses on four actions: • Prioritizing measures that can help identify and monitor disparities • Implementing evidence-based interventions to reduce disparities • Investing in the development and use of measures to assess disparity-re- ducing interventions • Providing incentives to reduce disparities The NQF developed the roadmap with input from nearly 24 public- and pri- vate-sector healthcare stakeholders, including payers, providers, consumers and patients. The organization will support stakeholders in implementing the aforementioned action steps through a new NQF Health Equity Program, said Shantanu Agrawal, MD, NQF's president and CEO. The program launched in October. n 88% of Healthcare Professionals Experience Workplace Violence By Alyssa Rege T he majority of healthcare profession- als said they have been victims of ver- bal and physical violence at the hands of colleagues and patients, according to a Medscape poll. Researchers surveyed 2,389 healthcare workers, including nurses, physicians, phar- macists and other providers, about work- place violence following the death of Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, DO, who was killed in a shoot- ing at New York City-based Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center earlier this year. Here are six findings from the report. 1. e plurality (88 percent) of those sur- veyed said they have personally experienced verbal abuse, while 76 percent said they have personally experienced intimidation. 2. In comparison, 92 percent and 81 percent of respondents said they've witnessed verbal abuse and intimidation in the workplace, re- spectively. 3. More than half (55 percent) of respon- dents said they had seen a physical assault occur in the workplace. 4. Roughly half of all nurses surveyed said they were victims of assault, compared with physicians (36 percent), pharmacists (18 percent) and other providers (24 percent). 5. While 77 percent of nurses in emergency medicine settings said they had experienced physical violence, nearly 60 percent of emer- gency room nurses said they sometimes, rarely or never filed a report detailing the incident. 6. Almost 70 percent of respondents said they received no or minimal training on how to cope with workplace violence. n

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