{"id":15202,"date":"2012-01-09T12:24:09","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T17:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&#038;p=15202"},"modified":"2012-04-05T12:43:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T16:43:23","slug":"what-are-the-biggest-opportunities-for-cost-savings-in-cardiology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/01\/09\/what-are-the-biggest-opportunities-for-cost-savings-in-cardiology\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are the Biggest Opportunities for Cost Savings in Cardiology?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone is focusing on the escalating, and presumably unsustainable, increases in medical costs. When Don Berwick departed from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last month he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/12\/04\/health\/policy\/parting-shot-at-waste-by-key-obama-health-official.html\">estimated that 20-30% of medical spending in the US is waste<\/a>\u2014spending that provides no meaningful benefit to patients. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation has launched the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abimfoundation.org\/Initiatives\/Managing-Resources.aspx%20\">Choose Wisely Initiative<\/a> with 9 specialty societies\u2014including the American College of Cardiology\u2014and Consumer Reports to identify 5 tests or procedures in each field that should be carefully questioned to help reduce waste (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ama-assn.org\/amednews\/2012\/01\/09\/prsc0109.htm\">here<\/a> for a recent news story).<\/p>\n<p>Here is a chance for our community to contribute. Where is the waste? What could we eliminate without risking the wellbeing of our patients?\u00a0 How many good ideas can we generate?<\/p>\n<p><em>Comments are closed on this post, but please join the conversation at <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/news\/medical-societies-release-lists-of-overused-tests-and-procedures\/\">our news story<\/a> on the ACC&#8217;s and the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology&#8217;s contributions to the Choosing Wisely initiative.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tell us the one test or procedure that you think should be carefully examined to make the biggest dent on waste in cardiac care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1095,1099,1098,1097],"class_list":["post-15202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-abim","tag-health-policy","tag-reducing-costs","tag-reducing-waste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}