Issue at the Heart of Advancing the De-Adoption of Low-Value Care. Proceedings from an expert roundtable.

Identifying and paying for value has become a recurrent theme of health care reforms. Its corollary, reducing the prevalence of, and resources directed to, ineffective or marginally effective care, has received far less attention. In July 2016, the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) convened a diverse set of national leaders and stakeholders representing industry, think-tanks, provider and patient groups, and academic experts to tackle how health systems, payers, and providers can spur the ‘de-adoption’ of medical practices and technologies no longer considered valuable. While the roundtable of experts unanimously supports the need for de-adoption and current efforts to curb the use of low-value practices or technologies, they identified four specific polarities at the heart of the debate about how best to build the momentum around deadoption, and move it forward. They are: 1) value (targeting ineffective, even harmful, care or expanding efforts to address care of limited value); 2) resource allocation (spending less or redirecting spending); 3) quality improvement (a subset of QI or a distinct process); 4) level of intervention (policy, payment, provider, or organization). In addition to these polarities, several key questions emerged that form practical next steps for advancing de-adoption activities. With an eye toward advancing de-adoption, this brief summarizes the polarities and questions that suggest priorities for a future research agenda and policy-relevant action steps.