Amol S. Navathe, MD, PhD

Physicians face growing pressure to reduce their use of “low value” care—services that provide either little to no benefit, little benefit relative to cost, or outsized potential harm compared to benefit. One emerging policy solution for deterring such services is to financially penalize physicians who prescribe them.^1,2

Physicians’ willingness to support such policies may depend on who they believe benefits from reductions in low-value care. In previous studies of cancer screening, the more that primary care physicians felt that the money saved from cost-containment efforts went to insurance company profits rather than to patients, the less willing they were to use less expensive cancer screening approaches.³

Similarly, physicians may be more likely to support financial penalty policies if they perceive that the benefits from reducing low-value care accrue to patients (eg, lower out-of-pocket costs) rather than insurers or hospitals (eg, profits and salaries of their leaders). If present, such perceptions could inform incentive design. We explored the hypothesis that support of financial penalties for low-value care would be associated with where physicians thought the money goes.

METHODS

Study Sample

By using a panel of internists maintained by the American College of Physicians, we conducted a randomized, web-based survey among 484 physicians who were either internal medicine residents or internal medicine physicians practicing hospital medicine.

Survey Instrument

Respondents used a 5-point scale (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) to indicate their agreement with a policy that financially penalizes physicians for prescribing services that provide few benefits to patients. Respondents were asked to simultaneously consider the following hospital medicine services, deemed to be low value based on medical evidence and consensus guidelines⁴: (1) placing, and leaving in, urinary catheters for urine output monitoring in noncritically ill patients, (2) ordering continuous telemetry monitoring for nonintensive care unit patients without a protocol governing continuation, and (3) prescribing stress ulcer prophylaxis for medical patients not at a high risk for gastrointestinal complications. Policy support was defined as “somewhat” or “strongly” agreeing with the policy. As part of another study of this physician cohort, this question varied in how the harm of low-value services was framed: either as harm to patients, to society, or to hospitals and insurers as institutions. Respondent characteristics were balanced across survey versions, and for the current analysis, we pooled responses across all versions.

All other questions in the survey, described in detail elsewhere,⁵ were identical for all respondents. For this analysis, we focused on a question that asked physicians to assume that reducing these services saves money without harming the quality of care and to rate on a 4-point scale (“none” to “a lot”) how much of the money saved would ultimately go to the following 6 nonmutually exclusive areas: (a) other healthcare services for patients, (b) reduced charges to patients’ employers or insurers, (c) reduced out-of-pocket costs for patients, (d) salaries and bonuses for physicians, (e) salaries and profits for insurance companies and their leaders, and (f) salaries and profits for hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders.

Based on the positive correlation identified between the first 4 items (a to d) and negative correlation with the other 2 items (e and f), we reverse-coded the latter 2 and summed all 6 into a single-outcome scale, effectively representing the degree to which the money saved from reducing low-value services accrues generally to patients or physicians instead of to hospitals, insurance companies, and their leaders. The Cronbach alpha for the scale was 0.74, indicating acceptable reliability. Based on scale responses, we dichotomized respondents at the median into those who believe that the money saved from reducing low-value services would accrue as benefits to patients or physicians and those who believe benefits accrue to insurance companies or hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders. The protocol was exempted by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board.

 

Statistical Analysis

We used a χ² test and multivariable logistic regression analysis to evaluate the association between policy support and physician beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care. A χ² test and a Kruskal-Wallis test were also used to evaluate the association between other respondent characteristics and beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care. Analyses were performed by using Stata version 14.1 (StataCorp, College Station, TX). Tests of significance were 2-tailed at an alpha of .05.

RESULTS

Compared with nonrespondents, the 187 physicians who responded (39% response rate) were more likely to be female (30% vs 26%, P = 0.001), older (mean age 41 vs 36 years old, P < 0.001), and practicing clinicians rather than internal medicine residents (87% vs 69%, P < 0.001). Twenty-one percent reported that their personal compensation was tied to cost incentives.

Overall, respondents believed that more of any money saved from reducing low-value services would go to profits and leadership salaries for insurance companies and hospitals and/or health systems rather than to patients (panel A of Figure). Few respondents felt that the money saved would ultimately go toward physician compensation.

Physician beliefs about where the majority of any money saved goes were associated with policy support (panel B of Figure). Among those who did not support penalties, 52% believed that the majority of any money saved would go to salaries and profits for insurance companies and their leaders, and 39% believed it would go to salaries and profits for hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders, compared to 35% (P = 0.02) and 32% (P = 0.37), respectively, among physicians who supported penalties.

Sixty-six percent of physicians who supported penalties believed that benefits from reducing low-value care accrue to patients or physicians, compared to 39% among those not supporting penalties (P < 0.001). In multivariable analyses, policy support was associated with the belief that the money saved from reducing low-value services would accrue as benefits to patients or physicians rather than as salaries and profits for insurance companies or hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders (Table). There were no statistically significant associations between respondent age, gender, or professional status and beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care.

DISCUSSION

Despite ongoing efforts to highlight how reducing low-value care benefits patients, physicians in our sample did not believe that much of the money saved would benefit patients.

This result may reflect that while some care patterns are considered low value because they provide little benefit at a high cost, others yield potential harm, regardless of cost. For example, limiting stress ulcer prophylaxis largely aims to avoid clinical harm (eg, adverse drug effects and nosocomial infections). Limiting telemetric monitoring largely aims to reduce costly care that provides only limited benefit. Therefore, the nature of potential benefit to patients is very different—improved clinical outcomes in the former and potential cost savings in the latter. Future studies could separately assess physician attitudes about these 2 different definitions of low-value services.

Our study also demonstrates that the more physicians believe that much of any money saved goes to the profits and salaries of insurance companies, hospitals and/or health systems, and their leaders rather than to patients, the less likely they are to support policies financially penalizing physicians for prescribing low-value services.

Our study does not address why physicians have the beliefs that they have, but a likely explanation, at least in part, is that financial flows in healthcare are complex and tangled. Indeed, a clear understanding of who actually benefits is so hard to determine that these stated beliefs may really derive from views of power or justice rather than from some understanding of funds flow. Whether or not ideological attitudes underlie these expressed beliefs, policymakers and healthcare institutions might be advised to increase transparency about how cost savings are realized and whom they benefit.

Our analysis has limitations. Although it provides insight into where physicians believe relative amounts of money saved go with respect to 6 common options, the study did not include an exhaustive list of possibilities. The response rate also limits the representativeness of our results. Additionally, the study design prevents conclusions about causality; we cannot determine whether the belief that savings go to insurance companies and their executives is what reduces physicians’ enthusiasm for penalties, whether the causal association is in the opposite direction, or whether the 2 factors are linked in another way.

Nonetheless, our findings are consistent with a sense of healthcare justice in which physicians support penalties imposed on themselves only if the resulting benefits accrue to patients rather than to corporate or organizational interests. Effective physician penalties will likely need to address the belief that insurers and provider organizations stand to gain more than patients when low-value care services are reduced.

 

Disclosure 

Drs. Liao, Schapira, Mitra, and Weissman have no conflicts to disclose. Dr. Navathe serves as advisor to Navvis and Company, Navigant Inc., Lynx Medical, Indegene Inc., and Sutherland Global Services and receives an honorarium from Elsevier Press, none of which have relationship to this manuscript. Dr. Asch is a partner and partial owner of VAL Health, which has no relationship to this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, which had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of results.

Physicians face growing pressure to reduce their use of “low value” care—services that provide either little to no benefit, little benefit relative to cost, or outsized potential harm compared to benefit. One emerging policy solution for deterring such services is to financially penalize physicians who prescribe them.^1,2

Physicians’ willingness to support such policies may depend on who they believe benefits from reductions in low-value care. In previous studies of cancer screening, the more that primary care physicians felt that the money saved from cost-containment efforts went to insurance company profits rather than to patients, the less willing they were to use less expensive cancer screening approaches.³

Similarly, physicians may be more likely to support financial penalty policies if they perceive that the benefits from reducing low-value care accrue to patients (eg, lower out-of-pocket costs) rather than insurers or hospitals (eg, profits and salaries of their leaders). If present, such perceptions could inform incentive design. We explored the hypothesis that support of financial penalties for low-value care would be associated with where physicians thought the money goes.

METHODS

Study Sample

By using a panel of internists maintained by the American College of Physicians, we conducted a randomized, web-based survey among 484 physicians who were either internal medicine residents or internal medicine physicians practicing hospital medicine.

Survey Instrument

Respondents used a 5-point scale (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) to indicate their agreement with a policy that financially penalizes physicians for prescribing services that provide few benefits to patients. Respondents were asked to simultaneously consider the following hospital medicine services, deemed to be low value based on medical evidence and consensus guidelines⁴: (1) placing, and leaving in, urinary catheters for urine output monitoring in noncritically ill patients, (2) ordering continuous telemetry monitoring for nonintensive care unit patients without a protocol governing continuation, and (3) prescribing stress ulcer prophylaxis for medical patients not at a high risk for gastrointestinal complications. Policy support was defined as “somewhat” or “strongly” agreeing with the policy. As part of another study of this physician cohort, this question varied in how the harm of low-value services was framed: either as harm to patients, to society, or to hospitals and insurers as institutions. Respondent characteristics were balanced across survey versions, and for the current analysis, we pooled responses across all versions.

All other questions in the survey, described in detail elsewhere,⁵ were identical for all respondents. For this analysis, we focused on a question that asked physicians to assume that reducing these services saves money without harming the quality of care and to rate on a 4-point scale (“none” to “a lot”) how much of the money saved would ultimately go to the following 6 nonmutually exclusive areas: (a) other healthcare services for patients, (b) reduced charges to patients’ employers or insurers, (c) reduced out-of-pocket costs for patients, (d) salaries and bonuses for physicians, (e) salaries and profits for insurance companies and their leaders, and (f) salaries and profits for hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders.

Based on the positive correlation identified between the first 4 items (a to d) and negative correlation with the other 2 items (e and f), we reverse-coded the latter 2 and summed all 6 into a single-outcome scale, effectively representing the degree to which the money saved from reducing low-value services accrues generally to patients or physicians instead of to hospitals, insurance companies, and their leaders. The Cronbach alpha for the scale was 0.74, indicating acceptable reliability. Based on scale responses, we dichotomized respondents at the median into those who believe that the money saved from reducing low-value services would accrue as benefits to patients or physicians and those who believe benefits accrue to insurance companies or hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders. The protocol was exempted by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board.

 

Statistical Analysis

We used a χ² test and multivariable logistic regression analysis to evaluate the association between policy support and physician beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care. A χ² test and a Kruskal-Wallis test were also used to evaluate the association between other respondent characteristics and beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care. Analyses were performed by using Stata version 14.1 (StataCorp, College Station, TX). Tests of significance were 2-tailed at an alpha of .05.

RESULTS

Compared with nonrespondents, the 187 physicians who responded (39% response rate) were more likely to be female (30% vs 26%, P = 0.001), older (mean age 41 vs 36 years old, P < 0.001), and practicing clinicians rather than internal medicine residents (87% vs 69%, P < 0.001). Twenty-one percent reported that their personal compensation was tied to cost incentives.

Overall, respondents believed that more of any money saved from reducing low-value services would go to profits and leadership salaries for insurance companies and hospitals and/or health systems rather than to patients (panel A of Figure). Few respondents felt that the money saved would ultimately go toward physician compensation.

Physician beliefs about where the majority of any money saved goes were associated with policy support (panel B of Figure). Among those who did not support penalties, 52% believed that the majority of any money saved would go to salaries and profits for insurance companies and their leaders, and 39% believed it would go to salaries and profits for hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders, compared to 35% (P = 0.02) and 32% (P = 0.37), respectively, among physicians who supported penalties.

Sixty-six percent of physicians who supported penalties believed that benefits from reducing low-value care accrue to patients or physicians, compared to 39% among those not supporting penalties (P < 0.001). In multivariable analyses, policy support was associated with the belief that the money saved from reducing low-value services would accrue as benefits to patients or physicians rather than as salaries and profits for insurance companies or hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders (Table). There were no statistically significant associations between respondent age, gender, or professional status and beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care.

DISCUSSION

Despite ongoing efforts to highlight how reducing low-value care benefits patients, physicians in our sample did not believe that much of the money saved would benefit patients.

This result may reflect that while some care patterns are considered low value because they provide little benefit at a high cost, others yield potential harm, regardless of cost. For example, limiting stress ulcer prophylaxis largely aims to avoid clinical harm (eg, adverse drug effects and nosocomial infections). Limiting telemetric monitoring largely aims to reduce costly care that provides only limited benefit. Therefore, the nature of potential benefit to patients is very different—improved clinical outcomes in the former and potential cost savings in the latter. Future studies could separately assess physician attitudes about these 2 different definitions of low-value services.

Our study also demonstrates that the more physicians believe that much of any money saved goes to the profits and salaries of insurance companies, hospitals and/or health systems, and their leaders rather than to patients, the less likely they are to support policies financially penalizing physicians for prescribing low-value services.

Our study does not address why physicians have the beliefs that they have, but a likely explanation, at least in part, is that financial flows in healthcare are complex and tangled. Indeed, a clear understanding of who actually benefits is so hard to determine that these stated beliefs may really derive from views of power or justice rather than from some understanding of funds flow. Whether or not ideological attitudes underlie these expressed beliefs, policymakers and healthcare institutions might be advised to increase transparency about how cost savings are realized and whom they benefit.

Our analysis has limitations. Although it provides insight into where physicians believe relative amounts of money saved go with respect to 6 common options, the study did not include an exhaustive list of possibilities. The response rate also limits the representativeness of our results. Additionally, the study design prevents conclusions about causality; we cannot determine whether the belief that savings go to insurance companies and their executives is what reduces physicians’ enthusiasm for penalties, whether the causal association is in the opposite direction, or whether the 2 factors are linked in another way.

Nonetheless, our findings are consistent with a sense of healthcare justice in which physicians support penalties imposed on themselves only if the resulting benefits accrue to patients rather than to corporate or organizational interests. Effective physician penalties will likely need to address the belief that insurers and provider organizations stand to gain more than patients when low-value care services are reduced.

 

Disclosure 

Drs. Liao, Schapira, Mitra, and Weissman have no conflicts to disclose. Dr. Navathe serves as advisor to Navvis and Company, Navigant Inc., Lynx Medical, Indegene Inc., and Sutherland Global Services and receives an honorarium from Elsevier Press, none of which have relationship to this manuscript. Dr. Asch is a partner and partial owner of VAL Health, which has no relationship to this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, which had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of results.

Physicians face growing pressure to reduce their use of “low value” care—services that provide either little to no benefit, little benefit relative to cost, or outsized potential harm compared to benefit. One emerging policy solution for deterring such services is to financially penalize physicians who prescribe them.^1,2

Physicians’ willingness to support such policies may depend on who they believe benefits from reductions in low-value care. In previous studies of cancer screening, the more that primary care physicians felt that the money saved from cost-containment efforts went to insurance company profits rather than to patients, the less willing they were to use less expensive cancer screening approaches.³

Similarly, physicians may be more likely to support financial penalty policies if they perceive that the benefits from reducing low-value care accrue to patients (eg, lower out-of-pocket costs) rather than insurers or hospitals (eg, profits and salaries of their leaders). If present, such perceptions could inform incentive design. We explored the hypothesis that support of financial penalties for low-value care would be associated with where physicians thought the money goes.

METHODS

Study Sample

By using a panel of internists maintained by the American College of Physicians, we conducted a randomized, web-based survey among 484 physicians who were either internal medicine residents or internal medicine physicians practicing hospital medicine.

Survey Instrument

Respondents used a 5-point scale (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”) to indicate their agreement with a policy that financially penalizes physicians for prescribing services that provide few benefits to patients. Respondents were asked to simultaneously consider the following hospital medicine services, deemed to be low value based on medical evidence and consensus guidelines⁴: (1) placing, and leaving in, urinary catheters for urine output monitoring in noncritically ill patients, (2) ordering continuous telemetry monitoring for nonintensive care unit patients without a protocol governing continuation, and (3) prescribing stress ulcer prophylaxis for medical patients not at a high risk for gastrointestinal complications. Policy support was defined as “somewhat” or “strongly” agreeing with the policy. As part of another study of this physician cohort, this question varied in how the harm of low-value services was framed: either as harm to patients, to society, or to hospitals and insurers as institutions. Respondent characteristics were balanced across survey versions, and for the current analysis, we pooled responses across all versions.

All other questions in the survey, described in detail elsewhere,⁵ were identical for all respondents. For this analysis, we focused on a question that asked physicians to assume that reducing these services saves money without harming the quality of care and to rate on a 4-point scale (“none” to “a lot”) how much of the money saved would ultimately go to the following 6 nonmutually exclusive areas: (a) other healthcare services for patients, (b) reduced charges to patients’ employers or insurers, (c) reduced out-of-pocket costs for patients, (d) salaries and bonuses for physicians, (e) salaries and profits for insurance companies and their leaders, and (f) salaries and profits for hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders.

Based on the positive correlation identified between the first 4 items (a to d) and negative correlation with the other 2 items (e and f), we reverse-coded the latter 2 and summed all 6 into a single-outcome scale, effectively representing the degree to which the money saved from reducing low-value services accrues generally to patients or physicians instead of to hospitals, insurance companies, and their leaders. The Cronbach alpha for the scale was 0.74, indicating acceptable reliability. Based on scale responses, we dichotomized respondents at the median into those who believe that the money saved from reducing low-value services would accrue as benefits to patients or physicians and those who believe benefits accrue to insurance companies or hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders. The protocol was exempted by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board.

 

Statistical Analysis

We used a χ² test and multivariable logistic regression analysis to evaluate the association between policy support and physician beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care. A χ² test and a Kruskal-Wallis test were also used to evaluate the association between other respondent characteristics and beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care. Analyses were performed by using Stata version 14.1 (StataCorp, College Station, TX). Tests of significance were 2-tailed at an alpha of .05.

RESULTS

Compared with nonrespondents, the 187 physicians who responded (39% response rate) were more likely to be female (30% vs 26%, P = 0.001), older (mean age 41 vs 36 years old, P < 0.001), and practicing clinicians rather than internal medicine residents (87% vs 69%, P < 0.001). Twenty-one percent reported that their personal compensation was tied to cost incentives.

Overall, respondents believed that more of any money saved from reducing low-value services would go to profits and leadership salaries for insurance companies and hospitals and/or health systems rather than to patients (panel A of Figure). Few respondents felt that the money saved would ultimately go toward physician compensation.

Physician beliefs about where the majority of any money saved goes were associated with policy support (panel B of Figure). Among those who did not support penalties, 52% believed that the majority of any money saved would go to salaries and profits for insurance companies and their leaders, and 39% believed it would go to salaries and profits for hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders, compared to 35% (P = 0.02) and 32% (P = 0.37), respectively, among physicians who supported penalties.

Sixty-six percent of physicians who supported penalties believed that benefits from reducing low-value care accrue to patients or physicians, compared to 39% among those not supporting penalties (P < 0.001). In multivariable analyses, policy support was associated with the belief that the money saved from reducing low-value services would accrue as benefits to patients or physicians rather than as salaries and profits for insurance companies or hospitals and/or health systems and their leaders (Table). There were no statistically significant associations between respondent age, gender, or professional status and beliefs about who benefits from reductions in low-value care.

DISCUSSION

Despite ongoing efforts to highlight how reducing low-value care benefits patients, physicians in our sample did not believe that much of the money saved would benefit patients.

This result may reflect that while some care patterns are considered low value because they provide little benefit at a high cost, others yield potential harm, regardless of cost. For example, limiting stress ulcer prophylaxis largely aims to avoid clinical harm (eg, adverse drug effects and nosocomial infections). Limiting telemetric monitoring largely aims to reduce costly care that provides only limited benefit. Therefore, the nature of potential benefit to patients is very different—improved clinical outcomes in the former and potential cost savings in the latter. Future studies could separately assess physician attitudes about these 2 different definitions of low-value services.

Our study also demonstrates that the more physicians believe that much of any money saved goes to the profits and salaries of insurance companies, hospitals and/or health systems, and their leaders rather than to patients, the less likely they are to support policies financially penalizing physicians for prescribing low-value services.

Our study does not address why physicians have the beliefs that they have, but a likely explanation, at least in part, is that financial flows in healthcare are complex and tangled. Indeed, a clear understanding of who actually benefits is so hard to determine that these stated beliefs may really derive from views of power or justice rather than from some understanding of funds flow. Whether or not ideological attitudes underlie these expressed beliefs, policymakers and healthcare institutions might be advised to increase transparency about how cost savings are realized and whom they benefit.

Our analysis has limitations. Although it provides insight into where physicians believe relative amounts of money saved go with respect to 6 common options, the study did not include an exhaustive list of possibilities. The response rate also limits the representativeness of our results. Additionally, the study design prevents conclusions about causality; we cannot determine whether the belief that savings go to insurance companies and their executives is what reduces physicians’ enthusiasm for penalties, whether the causal association is in the opposite direction, or whether the 2 factors are linked in another way.

Nonetheless, our findings are consistent with a sense of healthcare justice in which physicians support penalties imposed on themselves only if the resulting benefits accrue to patients rather than to corporate or organizational interests. Effective physician penalties will likely need to address the belief that insurers and provider organizations stand to gain more than patients when low-value care services are reduced.

 

Disclosure 

Drs. Liao, Schapira, Mitra, and Weissman have no conflicts to disclose. Dr. Navathe serves as advisor to Navvis and Company, Navigant Inc., Lynx Medical, Indegene Inc., and Sutherland Global Services and receives an honorarium from Elsevier Press, none of which have relationship to this manuscript. Dr. Asch is a partner and partial owner of VAL Health, which has no relationship to this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, which had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of results.

Reducing low-value care—services for which there is little to no benefit, little benefit relative to cost, or outsized potential harm compared with benefit—is an essential step toward maintaining or improving quality while lowering cost. Unfortunately, low-value services persist widelydespite professional consensus, guidelines, and national campaigns aimed to reduce them.^1-3 In turn, policy makers are beginning to consider financially penalizing physicians in order to deter low-value services.^4,5 Physician support for such penalties remains unknown. In this study, we used a randomized survey experiment to evaluate how the framing of harms from low-value care—in terms of those to patients, healthcare institutions, or society—influenced physician support of financial penalties for low-value care services.

METHODS

Study Sample

By using a stratified random sample maintained by the American College of Physicians, we conducted a web-based survey among 484 physicians who were either internal medicine residents or internists practicing hospital medicine.

Instrument Design and Administration

Our study focused on 3 low-value services relevant to inpatient medicine: (1) placing, and leaving in, urinary catheters for urine output monitoring in noncritically ill patients; (2) ordering continuous telemetry monitoring for nonintensive care unit (non-ICU) patients without a protocol governing continuation; and (3) prescribing stress ulcer prophylaxis for medical patients not at a high risk for gastrointestinal (GI) complications. Although the nature and trade-offs between costs, harms, and benefits vary by individual service, all 3 are promulgated through the Choosing Wisely^® guidelines as low value based on existing data and professional consensus from the Society of Hospital Medicine.⁶

To evaluate intended behavior related to these 3 low-value services, respondents were first presented with 3 clinical vignettes focused on the care of patients hospitalized for pneumonia, congestive heart failure, and alcohol withdrawal, which were selected to reflect common inpatient medicine scenarios. Respondents were asked to use a 4-point scale (very likely to very unlikely) to estimate how likely they were to recommend various tests or treatments, including the low-value services noted above. Respondents who were “somewhat unlikely” and “very unlikely” to recommend low-value services were considered concordant with low-value care guidelines.

Following the vignettes, respondents then used a 5-point scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) to indicate their agreement with a policy that financially penalizes physicians for prescribing each service. Support was defined as “somewhat or strongly” agreeing with the policy. Respondents were randomized to receive 1 of 3 versions of this question (supplementary Appendix).

All versions stated that, “According to research and expert opinion, certain aspects of inpatient care provide little benefit to patients” and listed the 3 low-value services noted above. The “patient harm” version also described the harm of low-value care as costs to patients and risk for clinical harms and complications. The “societal harm” version described the harms as costs to society and utilization of limited healthcare resources. The “institutional harm” version described harms as costs to hospitals and insurers.

Other survey items were adapted from existing literature^7-9 and evaluated respondent beliefs about the effectiveness of physician incentives in improving the value of care, as well as the appropriateness of including cost considerations in clinical decision-making.

The instrument was pilot tested among study team members and several independent internists affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. After incorporating feedback into the final instrument, the web-based survey was distributed to eligible physicians via e-mail. Responses were anonymous and respondents received a $15 gift card for participation. The protocol was reviewed and deemed exempt by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board.

Statistical Analysis

Respondent characteristics (sociodemographic, intended clinical behavior, and cost control attitudes) were described by using percentages for categorical variables and medians and interquartile ranges for continuous variables. Balance in respondent characteristics across survey versions was evaluated using χ² and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Multivariable logistic regression, adjusted for characteristics in the Table, was used to evaluate the association between survey version and policy support. All tests of significance were 2-tailed with significance level alpha = 0.05. Analyses were performed using STATA version 14.1 (StataCorp LLC, College Station, TX, http://www.stata.com).

 

RESULTS

Of 484 eligible respondents, 187 (39%) completed the survey. Compared with nonrespondents, respondents were more likely to be female (30% vs 26%, P = 0.001), older (mean age 41 vs 36 years, P < 0.001), and practicing clinicians rather than internal medicine residents (87% vs 69%, P < 0.001). Physician characteristics were similar across the 3 survey versions (Table). Most respondents agreed that financial incentives for individual physicians is an effective way to improve the value of healthcare (73.3%) and that physicians should consider the costs of a test or treatment to society when making clinical decisions for patients (79.1%). The majority also felt that clinicians have a duty to offer a test or treatment to a patient if it has any chance of helping them (70.1%) and that it is inappropriate for anyone beyond the clinician and patient to decide if a test or treatment is “worth the cost” (63.6%).

Concordance between intended behavior and low-value care guidelines ranged considerably (Figure). Only 11.8% reported behavior that was concordant with low-value care guidelines related to telemetric monitoring, whereas 57.8% and 78.6% reported concordant behavior for GI ulcer prophylaxis and urinary catheter placement, respectively.

Overall, policy support rate was 39.6% and was the highest for the “societal harm” version (48.4%), followed by the “institutional harm” (36.9%) and “patient harm” (33.3%) versions. Compared with respondents receiving the “patient harm” version, those receiving the “societal harm” version (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 2.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.20-6.69), but not the “institutional harm” framing (adjusted OR 1.53; 95% CI, 0.66-3.53), were more likely to report policy support. Policy support was also higher among those who agreed that providing financial incentives to individual physicians is an effective way to improve the value of healthcare (adjusted OR 4.61; 95% CI, 1.80-11.80).

DISCUSSION

To our knowledge, this study is the first to prospectively evaluate physician support of financial penalties for low-value services relevant to hospital medicine. It has 2 main findings.

First, although overall policy support was relatively low (39.6%), it varied significantly on the basis of how the harms of low-value care were framed. Support was highest in the “societal harm” version, suggesting that emphasizing these harms may increase acceptability of financial penalties among physicians and contribute to the larger effort to decrease low-value care in hospital settings. The comparatively low support for the “patient harm” version is somewhat surprising but may reflect variation in the nature of harm, benefit, and cost trade-offs for individual low-value services, as noted above, and physician belief that some low-value services do not in fact produce significant clinical harms.

For example, whereas evidence demonstrates that stress ulcer prophylaxis in non-ICU patients can harm patients through nosocomial infections and adverse drug effects,^10,11 the clinical harms of telemetry are less obvious. Telemetry’s low value derives more from its high cost relative to benefit, rather than its potential for clinical harm.⁶ The many paths to “low value” underscore the need to examine attitudes and uptake toward these services separately and may explain the wide range in concordance between intended clinical behavior and low-value care guidelines (11.8% to 78.6%).

Reinforcing policies could more effectively deter low-value care. For example, multiple forces, including Medicare payment reform and national accreditation policies,^12,13 have converged to discourage low-value use of urinary catheters in hospitalized patients. In contrast, there has been little reinforcement beyond consensus guidelines to reduce low-value use of telemetric monitoring. Given questions about whether consensus methods alone can deter low-value care beyond obvious “low hanging fruit,”¹⁴ policy makers could coordinate policies to accelerate progress within other priority areas.

Broad policies should also be paired with local initiatives to influence physician behavior. For example, health systems have begun successfully leveraging the electronic medical record and utilizing behavioral economics principles to design interventions to reduce inappropriate overuse of antibiotics for upper respiratory infections in primary care clinics.¹⁵ Organizations are also redesigning care processes in response to resource utilization imperatives under ongoing value-based care payment reform. Care redesign and behavioral interventions embedded at the point of care can both help deter low-value services in inpatient settings.

Study limitations include a relatively low response rate, which limits generalizability. However, all 3 randomized groups were similar on measured characteristics, and experimental randomization reduces the nonresponse bias concerns accompanying descriptive surveys. Additionally, although we evaluated intended clinical behavior in a national sample, our results may not reflect actual behavior among all physicians practicing hospital medicine. Future work could include assessments of actual or self-reported practices or examine additional factors, including site, years of practice, knowledge about guidelines, and other possible determinants of guideline-concordant behaviors.

Despite these limitations, our study provides important early evidence about physician support of financial penalties for low-value care relevant to hospital medicine. As policy makers design and organizational leaders implement financial incentive policies, this information can help increase their acceptability among physicians and more effectively reduce low-value care within hospitals.

 

Disclosure

Drs. Liao, Schapira, Mitra, and Weissman have no conflicts to disclose. Dr. Navathe serves as advisor to Navvis and Company, Navigant Inc, Lynx Medical, Indegene Inc, and Sutherland Global Services and receives an honorarium from Elsevier Press, none of which have relationship to this manuscript. Dr. Asch is a partner and part owner of VAL Health, which has no relationship to this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, which had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of results.

Reducing low-value care—services for which there is little to no benefit, little benefit relative to cost, or outsized potential harm compared with benefit—is an essential step toward maintaining or improving quality while lowering cost. Unfortunately, low-value services persist widelydespite professional consensus, guidelines, and national campaigns aimed to reduce them.^1-3 In turn, policy makers are beginning to consider financially penalizing physicians in order to deter low-value services.^4,5 Physician support for such penalties remains unknown. In this study, we used a randomized survey experiment to evaluate how the framing of harms from low-value care—in terms of those to patients, healthcare institutions, or society—influenced physician support of financial penalties for low-value care services.

METHODS

Study Sample

By using a stratified random sample maintained by the American College of Physicians, we conducted a web-based survey among 484 physicians who were either internal medicine residents or internists practicing hospital medicine.

Instrument Design and Administration

Our study focused on 3 low-value services relevant to inpatient medicine: (1) placing, and leaving in, urinary catheters for urine output monitoring in noncritically ill patients; (2) ordering continuous telemetry monitoring for nonintensive care unit (non-ICU) patients without a protocol governing continuation; and (3) prescribing stress ulcer prophylaxis for medical patients not at a high risk for gastrointestinal (GI) complications. Although the nature and trade-offs between costs, harms, and benefits vary by individual service, all 3 are promulgated through the Choosing Wisely^® guidelines as low value based on existing data and professional consensus from the Society of Hospital Medicine.⁶

To evaluate intended behavior related to these 3 low-value services, respondents were first presented with 3 clinical vignettes focused on the care of patients hospitalized for pneumonia, congestive heart failure, and alcohol withdrawal, which were selected to reflect common inpatient medicine scenarios. Respondents were asked to use a 4-point scale (very likely to very unlikely) to estimate how likely they were to recommend various tests or treatments, including the low-value services noted above. Respondents who were “somewhat unlikely” and “very unlikely” to recommend low-value services were considered concordant with low-value care guidelines.

Following the vignettes, respondents then used a 5-point scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) to indicate their agreement with a policy that financially penalizes physicians for prescribing each service. Support was defined as “somewhat or strongly” agreeing with the policy. Respondents were randomized to receive 1 of 3 versions of this question (supplementary Appendix).

All versions stated that, “According to research and expert opinion, certain aspects of inpatient care provide little benefit to patients” and listed the 3 low-value services noted above. The “patient harm” version also described the harm of low-value care as costs to patients and risk for clinical harms and complications. The “societal harm” version described the harms as costs to society and utilization of limited healthcare resources. The “institutional harm” version described harms as costs to hospitals and insurers.

Other survey items were adapted from existing literature^7-9 and evaluated respondent beliefs about the effectiveness of physician incentives in improving the value of care, as well as the appropriateness of including cost considerations in clinical decision-making.

The instrument was pilot tested among study team members and several independent internists affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. After incorporating feedback into the final instrument, the web-based survey was distributed to eligible physicians via e-mail. Responses were anonymous and respondents received a $15 gift card for participation. The protocol was reviewed and deemed exempt by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board.

Statistical Analysis

Respondent characteristics (sociodemographic, intended clinical behavior, and cost control attitudes) were described by using percentages for categorical variables and medians and interquartile ranges for continuous variables. Balance in respondent characteristics across survey versions was evaluated using χ² and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Multivariable logistic regression, adjusted for characteristics in the Table, was used to evaluate the association between survey version and policy support. All tests of significance were 2-tailed with significance level alpha = 0.05. Analyses were performed using STATA version 14.1 (StataCorp LLC, College Station, TX, http://www.stata.com).

 

RESULTS

Of 484 eligible respondents, 187 (39%) completed the survey. Compared with nonrespondents, respondents were more likely to be female (30% vs 26%, P = 0.001), older (mean age 41 vs 36 years, P < 0.001), and practicing clinicians rather than internal medicine residents (87% vs 69%, P < 0.001). Physician characteristics were similar across the 3 survey versions (Table). Most respondents agreed that financial incentives for individual physicians is an effective way to improve the value of healthcare (73.3%) and that physicians should consider the costs of a test or treatment to society when making clinical decisions for patients (79.1%). The majority also felt that clinicians have a duty to offer a test or treatment to a patient if it has any chance of helping them (70.1%) and that it is inappropriate for anyone beyond the clinician and patient to decide if a test or treatment is “worth the cost” (63.6%).

Concordance between intended behavior and low-value care guidelines ranged considerably (Figure). Only 11.8% reported behavior that was concordant with low-value care guidelines related to telemetric monitoring, whereas 57.8% and 78.6% reported concordant behavior for GI ulcer prophylaxis and urinary catheter placement, respectively.

Overall, policy support rate was 39.6% and was the highest for the “societal harm” version (48.4%), followed by the “institutional harm” (36.9%) and “patient harm” (33.3%) versions. Compared with respondents receiving the “patient harm” version, those receiving the “societal harm” version (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 2.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.20-6.69), but not the “institutional harm” framing (adjusted OR 1.53; 95% CI, 0.66-3.53), were more likely to report policy support. Policy support was also higher among those who agreed that providing financial incentives to individual physicians is an effective way to improve the value of healthcare (adjusted OR 4.61; 95% CI, 1.80-11.80).

DISCUSSION

To our knowledge, this study is the first to prospectively evaluate physician support of financial penalties for low-value services relevant to hospital medicine. It has 2 main findings.

First, although overall policy support was relatively low (39.6%), it varied significantly on the basis of how the harms of low-value care were framed. Support was highest in the “societal harm” version, suggesting that emphasizing these harms may increase acceptability of financial penalties among physicians and contribute to the larger effort to decrease low-value care in hospital settings. The comparatively low support for the “patient harm” version is somewhat surprising but may reflect variation in the nature of harm, benefit, and cost trade-offs for individual low-value services, as noted above, and physician belief that some low-value services do not in fact produce significant clinical harms.

For example, whereas evidence demonstrates that stress ulcer prophylaxis in non-ICU patients can harm patients through nosocomial infections and adverse drug effects,^10,11 the clinical harms of telemetry are less obvious. Telemetry’s low value derives more from its high cost relative to benefit, rather than its potential for clinical harm.⁶ The many paths to “low value” underscore the need to examine attitudes and uptake toward these services separately and may explain the wide range in concordance between intended clinical behavior and low-value care guidelines (11.8% to 78.6%).

Reinforcing policies could more effectively deter low-value care. For example, multiple forces, including Medicare payment reform and national accreditation policies,^12,13 have converged to discourage low-value use of urinary catheters in hospitalized patients. In contrast, there has been little reinforcement beyond consensus guidelines to reduce low-value use of telemetric monitoring. Given questions about whether consensus methods alone can deter low-value care beyond obvious “low hanging fruit,”¹⁴ policy makers could coordinate policies to accelerate progress within other priority areas.

Broad policies should also be paired with local initiatives to influence physician behavior. For example, health systems have begun successfully leveraging the electronic medical record and utilizing behavioral economics principles to design interventions to reduce inappropriate overuse of antibiotics for upper respiratory infections in primary care clinics.¹⁵ Organizations are also redesigning care processes in response to resource utilization imperatives under ongoing value-based care payment reform. Care redesign and behavioral interventions embedded at the point of care can both help deter low-value services in inpatient settings.

Study limitations include a relatively low response rate, which limits generalizability. However, all 3 randomized groups were similar on measured characteristics, and experimental randomization reduces the nonresponse bias concerns accompanying descriptive surveys. Additionally, although we evaluated intended clinical behavior in a national sample, our results may not reflect actual behavior among all physicians practicing hospital medicine. Future work could include assessments of actual or self-reported practices or examine additional factors, including site, years of practice, knowledge about guidelines, and other possible determinants of guideline-concordant behaviors.

Despite these limitations, our study provides important early evidence about physician support of financial penalties for low-value care relevant to hospital medicine. As policy makers design and organizational leaders implement financial incentive policies, this information can help increase their acceptability among physicians and more effectively reduce low-value care within hospitals.

 

Disclosure

Drs. Liao, Schapira, Mitra, and Weissman have no conflicts to disclose. Dr. Navathe serves as advisor to Navvis and Company, Navigant Inc, Lynx Medical, Indegene Inc, and Sutherland Global Services and receives an honorarium from Elsevier Press, none of which have relationship to this manuscript. Dr. Asch is a partner and part owner of VAL Health, which has no relationship to this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, which had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of results.

Reducing low-value care—services for which there is little to no benefit, little benefit relative to cost, or outsized potential harm compared with benefit—is an essential step toward maintaining or improving quality while lowering cost. Unfortunately, low-value services persist widelydespite professional consensus, guidelines, and national campaigns aimed to reduce them.^1-3 In turn, policy makers are beginning to consider financially penalizing physicians in order to deter low-value services.^4,5 Physician support for such penalties remains unknown. In this study, we used a randomized survey experiment to evaluate how the framing of harms from low-value care—in terms of those to patients, healthcare institutions, or society—influenced physician support of financial penalties for low-value care services.

METHODS

Study Sample

By using a stratified random sample maintained by the American College of Physicians, we conducted a web-based survey among 484 physicians who were either internal medicine residents or internists practicing hospital medicine.

Instrument Design and Administration

Our study focused on 3 low-value services relevant to inpatient medicine: (1) placing, and leaving in, urinary catheters for urine output monitoring in noncritically ill patients; (2) ordering continuous telemetry monitoring for nonintensive care unit (non-ICU) patients without a protocol governing continuation; and (3) prescribing stress ulcer prophylaxis for medical patients not at a high risk for gastrointestinal (GI) complications. Although the nature and trade-offs between costs, harms, and benefits vary by individual service, all 3 are promulgated through the Choosing Wisely^® guidelines as low value based on existing data and professional consensus from the Society of Hospital Medicine.⁶

To evaluate intended behavior related to these 3 low-value services, respondents were first presented with 3 clinical vignettes focused on the care of patients hospitalized for pneumonia, congestive heart failure, and alcohol withdrawal, which were selected to reflect common inpatient medicine scenarios. Respondents were asked to use a 4-point scale (very likely to very unlikely) to estimate how likely they were to recommend various tests or treatments, including the low-value services noted above. Respondents who were “somewhat unlikely” and “very unlikely” to recommend low-value services were considered concordant with low-value care guidelines.

Following the vignettes, respondents then used a 5-point scale (strongly agree to strongly disagree) to indicate their agreement with a policy that financially penalizes physicians for prescribing each service. Support was defined as “somewhat or strongly” agreeing with the policy. Respondents were randomized to receive 1 of 3 versions of this question (supplementary Appendix).

All versions stated that, “According to research and expert opinion, certain aspects of inpatient care provide little benefit to patients” and listed the 3 low-value services noted above. The “patient harm” version also described the harm of low-value care as costs to patients and risk for clinical harms and complications. The “societal harm” version described the harms as costs to society and utilization of limited healthcare resources. The “institutional harm” version described harms as costs to hospitals and insurers.

Other survey items were adapted from existing literature^7-9 and evaluated respondent beliefs about the effectiveness of physician incentives in improving the value of care, as well as the appropriateness of including cost considerations in clinical decision-making.

The instrument was pilot tested among study team members and several independent internists affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. After incorporating feedback into the final instrument, the web-based survey was distributed to eligible physicians via e-mail. Responses were anonymous and respondents received a $15 gift card for participation. The protocol was reviewed and deemed exempt by the University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board.

Statistical Analysis

Respondent characteristics (sociodemographic, intended clinical behavior, and cost control attitudes) were described by using percentages for categorical variables and medians and interquartile ranges for continuous variables. Balance in respondent characteristics across survey versions was evaluated using χ² and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Multivariable logistic regression, adjusted for characteristics in the Table, was used to evaluate the association between survey version and policy support. All tests of significance were 2-tailed with significance level alpha = 0.05. Analyses were performed using STATA version 14.1 (StataCorp LLC, College Station, TX, http://www.stata.com).

 

RESULTS

Of 484 eligible respondents, 187 (39%) completed the survey. Compared with nonrespondents, respondents were more likely to be female (30% vs 26%, P = 0.001), older (mean age 41 vs 36 years, P < 0.001), and practicing clinicians rather than internal medicine residents (87% vs 69%, P < 0.001). Physician characteristics were similar across the 3 survey versions (Table). Most respondents agreed that financial incentives for individual physicians is an effective way to improve the value of healthcare (73.3%) and that physicians should consider the costs of a test or treatment to society when making clinical decisions for patients (79.1%). The majority also felt that clinicians have a duty to offer a test or treatment to a patient if it has any chance of helping them (70.1%) and that it is inappropriate for anyone beyond the clinician and patient to decide if a test or treatment is “worth the cost” (63.6%).

Concordance between intended behavior and low-value care guidelines ranged considerably (Figure). Only 11.8% reported behavior that was concordant with low-value care guidelines related to telemetric monitoring, whereas 57.8% and 78.6% reported concordant behavior for GI ulcer prophylaxis and urinary catheter placement, respectively.

Overall, policy support rate was 39.6% and was the highest for the “societal harm” version (48.4%), followed by the “institutional harm” (36.9%) and “patient harm” (33.3%) versions. Compared with respondents receiving the “patient harm” version, those receiving the “societal harm” version (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 2.83; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.20-6.69), but not the “institutional harm” framing (adjusted OR 1.53; 95% CI, 0.66-3.53), were more likely to report policy support. Policy support was also higher among those who agreed that providing financial incentives to individual physicians is an effective way to improve the value of healthcare (adjusted OR 4.61; 95% CI, 1.80-11.80).

DISCUSSION

To our knowledge, this study is the first to prospectively evaluate physician support of financial penalties for low-value services relevant to hospital medicine. It has 2 main findings.

First, although overall policy support was relatively low (39.6%), it varied significantly on the basis of how the harms of low-value care were framed. Support was highest in the “societal harm” version, suggesting that emphasizing these harms may increase acceptability of financial penalties among physicians and contribute to the larger effort to decrease low-value care in hospital settings. The comparatively low support for the “patient harm” version is somewhat surprising but may reflect variation in the nature of harm, benefit, and cost trade-offs for individual low-value services, as noted above, and physician belief that some low-value services do not in fact produce significant clinical harms.

For example, whereas evidence demonstrates that stress ulcer prophylaxis in non-ICU patients can harm patients through nosocomial infections and adverse drug effects,^10,11 the clinical harms of telemetry are less obvious. Telemetry’s low value derives more from its high cost relative to benefit, rather than its potential for clinical harm.⁶ The many paths to “low value” underscore the need to examine attitudes and uptake toward these services separately and may explain the wide range in concordance between intended clinical behavior and low-value care guidelines (11.8% to 78.6%).

Reinforcing policies could more effectively deter low-value care. For example, multiple forces, including Medicare payment reform and national accreditation policies,^12,13 have converged to discourage low-value use of urinary catheters in hospitalized patients. In contrast, there has been little reinforcement beyond consensus guidelines to reduce low-value use of telemetric monitoring. Given questions about whether consensus methods alone can deter low-value care beyond obvious “low hanging fruit,”¹⁴ policy makers could coordinate policies to accelerate progress within other priority areas.

Broad policies should also be paired with local initiatives to influence physician behavior. For example, health systems have begun successfully leveraging the electronic medical record and utilizing behavioral economics principles to design interventions to reduce inappropriate overuse of antibiotics for upper respiratory infections in primary care clinics.¹⁵ Organizations are also redesigning care processes in response to resource utilization imperatives under ongoing value-based care payment reform. Care redesign and behavioral interventions embedded at the point of care can both help deter low-value services in inpatient settings.

Study limitations include a relatively low response rate, which limits generalizability. However, all 3 randomized groups were similar on measured characteristics, and experimental randomization reduces the nonresponse bias concerns accompanying descriptive surveys. Additionally, although we evaluated intended clinical behavior in a national sample, our results may not reflect actual behavior among all physicians practicing hospital medicine. Future work could include assessments of actual or self-reported practices or examine additional factors, including site, years of practice, knowledge about guidelines, and other possible determinants of guideline-concordant behaviors.

Despite these limitations, our study provides important early evidence about physician support of financial penalties for low-value care relevant to hospital medicine. As policy makers design and organizational leaders implement financial incentive policies, this information can help increase their acceptability among physicians and more effectively reduce low-value care within hospitals.

 

Disclosure

Drs. Liao, Schapira, Mitra, and Weissman have no conflicts to disclose. Dr. Navathe serves as advisor to Navvis and Company, Navigant Inc, Lynx Medical, Indegene Inc, and Sutherland Global Services and receives an honorarium from Elsevier Press, none of which have relationship to this manuscript. Dr. Asch is a partner and part owner of VAL Health, which has no relationship to this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, which had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of results.