Recommendations
Tests, treatments, and procedures for healthcare providers and consumers to question
Australia's peak health professional colleges, societies and associations have developed lists of recommendations of the tests, treatments, and procedures that healthcare providers and consumers should question.
Each recommendation is based on the latest available evidence. Importantly, they are not prescriptive but are intended as guidance to start a conversation about what is appropriate and necessary.
As each situation is unique, healthcare providers and consumers should use the recommendations to collaboratively formulate an appropriate healthcare plan together.
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Society of Obstetric Medicine of Australia and New Zealand
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How this list was made
SOMANZ Council members considered potential low value clinical practices in obstetric medicine of relevance to SOMANZ members, and developed a shortlist of nine items. Council members then worked with the RACP to compile and review the published research on each of these practices. Based on the review, the list of potential items of interest was refined down to seven and recommendations for these were formulated.
All Fellows and advanced trainees of SOMANZ were surveyed online for their views on these seven draft recommendations and provided with evidence summaries for each, and for their suggestions of other practices not already included. They were asked to score each recommendation based on whether they thought it was evidence based, currently undertaken in significant volume, and important for reducing harms and/or unnecessary healthcare costs. Based on the scores and feedback, the final top-five recommendations were then finalised and approved by SOMANZ Council.
Internal Medicine Society of Australia and New Zealand
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How this list was made
A panel of IMSANZ members produced an initial list of 32 low value tests, treatments and management decisions frequently encountered in general medicine services. This initial list was distributed via e-mail to 350 members of a working group comprising approximately 50 general physicians as well as nurses and allied health professionals who ranked the items in terms of priority and were free to nominate additional items. Based on their responses, the list was condensed to 15 items including three which were not previously listed. These 15 items were the subject of a face-to-face forum of the working group which reached consensus on a final list of 10.
Recommendations on ‘what not to do’ were formulated around these 10 items and a summary of the evidence for each recommendation was prepared. An online survey based on this work was presented to, and approved by, IMSANZ Council. The survey was sent to all IMSANZ members asking respondents to assign a score from 1 to 5 for each recommendation on three criteria: ‘The clinical practice being targeted by this recommendation is still being undertaken in significant numbers’; ‘This recommendation is evidence-based’; and ‘This recommendation is important in terms of reducing harm to patients and/or costs to the healthcare system’. The survey attracted 182 respondents from all across Australia and New Zealand, which was a response rate of 26%. The final top five chosen were the recommendations with the five highest average total scores assigned to them.