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ASH recognizes three Choosing Wisely Champions
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SAN DIEGO — ASH today recognized the efforts of three clinicians who have implemented successful Choosing Wisely projects to improve the quality of care at their institutions.
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign is designed to reduce unnecessary expenses without sacrificing quality care. The goal is to encourage patient–provider conversations about the necessity and potential harm of certain procedures.
Since 2013, ASH has issued 15 evidence-based recommendations about certain tests, treatments and procedures in hematology that should be questioned in some cases.
As part of ABIM’s new Choosing Wisely Champions initiative, ASH honored three clinicians whose work specifically advances the ideals of Choosing Wisely.
These three clinicians include:
- Maria Juarez, MD, of Baylor Scott & White Health and Cancer Institute of Dallas — Juarez and colleagues launched an educational campaign — “Why Give 2 when 1 will do?” — developed an institutional clinical practice recommendation and modified transfusion workflow in the electronic health record to reduce variability in blood utilization. Their efforts have increased the number of single unit transfusions by approximately 17%, and single-unit transfusions are now the most common red blood cell transfusion order at their institution.
- Javier Munoz, MD, MS, FACP, of Banner MD Anderson Cancer Center in Gilbert, Arizona — Munoz and colleagues aimed to avoid potential harm from overtesting patients with an intervention that uses an automatic alert in an electronic medical record to encourage clinicians to weight the benefits and risks of post-treatment imaging scans for patients with lymphoma. Interim study data show the automatic alert has reduced the number of monthly scans from 48.3 scans per month in the 8 months prior to the intervention to 25.3 scans per month over the course of the first 3 months of the study.
- Ravi Sarode , MD, of UT Southwestern Medical Center — Because Sarode and colleagues found that 85% of thrombophilia tests at UT Southwestern’s two teaching hospitals were incorrectly or incompletely ordered, they developed and implemented guidelines in the electronic medical record. Clinicians must respond to a series of questions before ordering tests, and implementation of this program reducing thrombophilia testing by more than 90%.
“Improving quality in medical practice requires creativity, hard work, dedication and the ability to question commonplace practices,” Lisa Hicks, MD, hematologist at St. Michael’s Hospital and University of Toronto and chair of the ASH Choosing Wisely Task Force, said in a press release. “Choosing Wisely Champions is a way for us to honor practitioners who have taken on the challenge of eliminating the unnecessary and potentially harmful hematology tests and treatments at their own institutions. Their success is inspiring, and I have no doubt that they will motivate others to follow their lead.”