ArticleEuropean journal of public health2020
Assessing volume and variation of low-value care practices in the Netherlands.
Article in European journal of public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Overuse of diagnostic testing in healthcare: a systematic review.BMJ quality & safety · 2022Pooled it
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- Futile therapy protocols: A 3-year review of the implementation of Polish guidelines on ineffective organ function maintenance in pediatric intensive care unit-A pilot study.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
- Opinion of Polish doctors on the use of futile therapy.European journal of public health · 2025Article
- Diagnostic Technology: Trends of Use and Availability in a 10-Year Period (2011-2020) among Sixteen OECD Countries.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- 'Give me something meaningful': GPs perspectives on how to improve an audit and feedback report provided by health insurers - an exploratory qualitative study.BMJ open quality · 2022Article
- Prevalence and changes of low-value care at acute care hospitals: a multicentre observational study in Japan.BMJ open · 2022Observational
- Identifying and prioritizing do-not-do recommendations in Dutch primary care.BMC primary care · 2022Article
- Low-value pharmaceutical care among Dutch GPs: a retrospective cohort study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2022Article
- Characterizing and quantifying low-value diagnostic imaging internationally: a scoping review.BMC medical imaging · 2022Article
- Defining value in health care: a scoping review of the literature.International journal for quality in health care : journal of the International Society for Quality in Health Care · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThere have been contributions to quantify the volume of low-value care practices in the USA, Canada and Australia but we have no knowledge about the volume in Europe. The purpose of this study was to assess the volume and variation of Dutch low-value care practices.
methodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study with data of a Dutch healthcare insurance company from general practioners (GP's) and hospitals in the Netherlands from 2016. We used all billing claims made by healthcare providers of 3.5 million Dutch inhabitants. We studied Choosing Wisely recommendations in order to select low-value care practices. We used the percentage low-value care practices per hospital and number of low-value care practices per GP as outcomes.
resultsWe assessed the volume of low-back imaging by GPs, screening of patients over 75 years for colorectal cancer and diagnosing varices with Doppler or Plethysmography. We found that 0.4% (range 0-7%) of the eligible patients received low-value screening for colorectal cancer and 8.0% (range 0-88%) of eligible patients received low-value diagnosing of varices. About 52.4% of the GPs ordered X-rays and 11.2% ordered magnetic resonance imagings of the lumbosacral spine. Most healthcare providers did not provide the measured low-value care practices. However, 1 in 12 GPs ordered at least one low-back X-ray a week.
conclusionsThe three Choosing Wisely recommendations showed a lot of practice variation; many healthcare providers did not order these low-value diagnostic tests; a minor part did order a substantial amount, low-back spine radiology in particular. These healthcare providers should start reducing these activities.
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