The ultimate goal of the Taking Action on Overuse framework is to help your organization build a culture where care teams take ownership for reducing overuse. But what does this look like? Our research of medical overuse reduction efforts across the country revealed common indicators of success that include:
Care teams feel safe to speak up about overuse and enact solutions.
Care teams engage in problem solving around overuse within a non-threatening environment where they exchange ideas about actions they can take to reduce overuse. Leadership can help by creating time dedicated to discussing overuse, emphasizing blame-free discussions, and stressing that voices from every level of the care team are welcome to participate. Read more about building a culture of trust, innovation, and improvement here.
Resources are dedicated to consistent measurement of overuse.
Care teams that have taken ownership around overuse regularly meet to review trusted measures of use. Leadership has committed resources for the collection, analysis, and distribution of specific data that care teams can use to inform their reduction efforts. Read more about committing resources to measurement here.
Reducing overuse becomes part of their professional identity
Invested care teams consider providing the right level of care as part of how they define themselves as health care professionals and they proactively seek tools and metrics to help them address overused services.