A Helpful Resource for You and Your Patients I wanted to pass along a great website for helping your patients make better decisions about Western medicine and also help you with up to date information so you can make better referrals to Western medicine resources. Choosing Wisely is an effort begun by the American Board of Internal Medicine that now involves many other specialties. It started as an effort to educate physicians about how to avoid unnecessary tests or practices and was then expanded to include educational outreach to consumers. According to their website the goal is to: “promote conversations between providers and patients by helping patients choose care that is: Supported by evidence. Not duplicative of other tests or procedures already received. Free from harm. Truly necessary” These are needed goals indeed. The best part of this site is under the “LIST” tab as that leads to two long lists – one meant for the public and the other for physicians. I highly recommend Acupuncturists review both lists as they will help you understand how to refer patients out for tests/procedures that are supported by evidence as being necessary and also provides a great resource for your patients to understand when they don’t need certain tests, procedures, or medications. Sometimes patients may not listen to the opinion of a Licensed Acupuncturist when we try to warn them about some Western medicine procedure. But here, this advice is coming from the leadership of physicians’ groups not some New Age Acupuncturist. The consumer list offers advice on many common disorders and practices from antibiotics, bone-density tests, colonoscopies, imaging tests and more. For example, did you know that in the absence of specific risk factors, colonoscopies for cancer screenings are now only considered necessary (starting at age 50) every 10 years at most? Knowing up to date information on the many tests that are now considered unnecessary is not only important for consumers but practitioners such as Acupuncturists so they can avoid referring-out unnecessarily. Acupuncturists have a responsibility to refer when necessary and this information helps you know the latest on what authorities consider necessary now. I suspect this campaign was expanded to include consumers only after efforts to get physicians to stop doing these things largely failed so don’t assume physicians are automatically on-board with this. In any event, a good resource that I hope you find helpful! Matt Bauer choosingwisely.org/about-us/
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 14:25:01 +0000
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