“Overuse of medical tests is a serious problem, and health care reform is incomplete without medical liability reform,” said ACEP President Dr. Alex Rosenau.

“Millions of dollars in defensive medicine are driving up the costs of health care for everyone. We will continue to encourage the ABIM Foundation and its many partnersin this campaign to lend their influential voices to the need for medical liability reform,” according to Dr. Rosenau.

How This List Was Created

ACEP developed five Choosing Wisely® recommendations through a multi-step process that included input from ACEP members, an expert panel of emergency physicians, and the ACEP Board of Directors. In 2012, ACEP appointed a task force to address cost effective emergency care.

The Cost Effective Care Task Force conducted a survey that was open to all ACEP members asking for strategies to reduce cost and improve value in emergency medicine. The task force received over 200 individual suggestions, which were grouped into a set of strategies.

A technical expert panel, including representatives from all aspects of emergency medicine practice, reviewed and prioritized the recommendations using a modified Delphi technique.

The panel prioritized the strategies using multiple rounds of voting based on the contribution to cost reduction, the benefit to patients, and the actionability by emergency physicians.

A literature review including data on cost was assembled for the highest-rated strategies. Strategies were further refined, and a final list of strategies that received majority support of the panelists was created. Five of these were ultimately selected by the Board of Directors to be included in Choosing Wisely.®

ACEP’s disclosure and conflict of interest policy can be found online.