Browsing by Author "Sypes, Emma Elizabeth"

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    Understanding the Role of the Public in Reducing Low-value Care
    (2019-06-21) Sypes, Emma Elizabeth; Stelfox, Henry Thomas; Niven, Daniel J.; Parsons-Leigh, Jeanna; Clement, Fiona M.
    Low-value care consists of medical tests and treatments that are unnecessary, potentially harmful, or not cost-effective and contribute to rising healthcare costs, adverse events, and poor quality of care. In recent years there has been a surge in initiatives aiming to identify and reduce low-value care. However, the role of the public in reducing low-value care remains unclear. The research reported in this thesis aimed to understand the role of the public in reducing low-value care through a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature. A scoping review identified 151 relevant articles. The majority of these articles described or evaluated a strategy for involving the public in reducing low-value care; articles that explored stakeholder perspectives about the role of the public were less common. Public involvement most commonly occurred at the level of the patient-clinician interaction, followed by administrative and policy decision-making and low-value care research. Shared decision-making and patient-oriented education were the most frequent and best supported strategies. There was considerably less support for public involvement at the level of administrative and policy decision-making. A follow-up systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the impact of patient-targeted interventions to reduce low-value care. This study found a statistically significant association between patient-targeted interventions (i.e., shared decision-making, patient-oriented education) and a decrease in use of the low-value practices (RR 0.75; 95% CI 0.66-0.84), which remained significant when the meta-analysis was restricted to randomized clinical trials with low risk of bias (RR 0.69; 95% CI 0.58-0.83). Collectively, these two studies show a considerable amount of support for engaging the public in reducing low-value care at the level of the patient-clinician interaction through strategies including shared decision-making and patient-oriented education. There is comparably less evidence to support public involvement in research or administrative and policy decision-making. Additional research to explore stakeholder perspectives and evaluate strategies for public involvement within varying contexts is required to further understand the role of the public in reducing low-value care.