Low-value care-medical tests and procedures that provide little to no benefit to patients-contributes to excess medical spending and both direct and cascading harms to patients. A research team from Mass General Brigham and their collaborators have found that telemedicine may help to reduce the use of low-value tests. The work is published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
“In theory, widespread adoption of telemedicine post-pandemic may influence low-value testing-such as Pap smears and prostate cancer screenings in older adults, and imaging scans for straightforward cases of low back pain,” said lead author Ishani Ganguli, MD, MPH, of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of Mass General Brigham, and an Associate Professor of Medicine…