Overuse in Healthcare: 5 Examples

23 percent of tympanostomy tubes placed for middle ear infection are inappropriate (Kleinman et al. 1994); 5–35 percent of adult asthma care are inappropriate (Starfield et al. 1994); 16 percent of hysterectomies are inappropriate (Bernstein et al. 1993); 9.4 percent of hospital admissions for pneumonia are considered inappropriate (Payne et al. 1995); and 20 percent…

The Underuse of Overuse Research

Health economics, physicians and health services researchers have found that overuse, not underuse, is the major problem for many medical services.  Yet you rarely here a campaign to reduce that quantity of medical care provided.  Why is this? An editorial in Health Services Research gives two important explanations for this.  First, measuring overuse is difficult.…