CHOOSING WISELY AUSTRALIA
Choosing Wisely Australia® is enabling clinicians, consumers and healthcare stakeholders
to start important conversations about tests, treatments and procedures where evidence
shows they provide no benefit and in some cases, lead to harm.
The issue
Consumers
Choosing Wisely Australia is empowering
consumers and health professionals to initiate
frank discussions about what care is truly
needed.
Choosing Wisely Australia can only be
effective if consumers are part of the
conversation and are provided with the
evidence they need to confidently ask
questions about how best to limit their
exposure to unnecessary and potentially
harmful tests, treatments and procedures.
Not all tests, treatments and procedures are
in the consumer’s best interest. Unnecessary
practices are a diversion from high quality care.
They can lead to more frequent and invasive
investigations that can expose consumers
to undue risk of harm, emotional stress and
financial cost. Many have become ingrained in
the system.
It is well documented that when it comes to
healthcare, most people overestimate the
benefits and underestimate the harms. They
may have unrealistic expectations about what
can be achieved and as a result the notion that
more is better prevails.
Importantly, Choosing Wisely Australia sets
out to affect a cultural shift by challenging the
notion that ‘more is always better’.
The professionals
Australia’s medical colleges and societies are
leading the way. They are identifying those
practices that warrant scrutiny, discussing best
practice and drawing on the expert opinion of
their members to make the sometimes difficult
decisions about which practices should be
avoided.
Each organisation is developing a list of
recommendations: ‘Tests, treatments and
procedures to question’.
These recommendations and the evidence that
supports them are being shared among the
wider health community and more broadly, the
general public.
It places consumers at the forefront of their
health and increases their capacity to make
informed decisions in partnership with their
healthcare professionals in ways that cater
for their own preferences and personal
circumstances.
Community benefits
While the focus of Choosing Wisely Australia
is firmly on best practice and high quality care
there are clear benefits for the health system.
Unnecessary practices represent a significant
burden on the healthcare budget.
Choosing Wisely Australia gives the medical
community the platform it needs to take a
leadership role in the responsible management
and fair distribution of finite healthcare
resources.
Wise stewardship of resources is a core tenet
of medical professionalism. The initiative gives
practitioners the opportunity to have greater
control over how funding is allocated in
keeping the healthcare system sustainable.
The people behind Choosing
Wisely Australia
The history of Choosing Wisely
Australia
Choosing Wisely Australia is being led by
Australia’s medical colleges and societies and
facilitated by NPS MedicineWise.
Choosing Wisely Australia is part of a global
move to improve healthcare. It began in
2012, when the American Board of Internal
Medicine Foundation, Consumer Reports and
nine medical specialty societies launched the
Choosing Wisely campaign. The response far
exceeded expectations and now more than 60
medical societies have joined and hundreds of
evidence-based recommendations have been
translated into consumer-friendly language
and used by tens of millions of consumers.
Since inception in 1998, NPS MedicineWise
has been the lead body driving quality use of
medicines and more recently, medical tests
in Australia. It does this in a strictly evidencebased and highly collaborative way.
Independent and not-for-profit, it works
with member organisations, industry and
professional organisations, consumers and
government and seeks advice from a broad
range of expert advisors to positively change
attitudes and behaviours so that consumers
and health professionals are equipped to make
the best decisions when it counts.
The campaign’s success has been attributed
to its unique focus on professional values and
patient–practitioner interactions. Choosing
Wisely Canada was launched in 2013 and
similar initiatives are being formed in Germany,
Italy, Japan, Netherlands and Switzerland as
well as in Australia.
The process
Medical colleges and societies participate in Choosing Wisely Australia through developing and
disseminating lists of tests, treatments procedures recognised to be overused or misused. While
organisations have free rein to develop their own methods for determining their recommendations,
improved patient care is the core objective and each recommendation must have this as its focus
and be strongly evidence-based. To ensure transparency, each recommendation is supported by
documented evidence that is available for scrutiny.
Partnerships
Choosing Wisely Australia is a growing movement. To date, the following medical colleges and
societies have committed to the campaign:
• Australasian College of Emergency Medicine
• Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy
• The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners
• The Royal Australasian College of Physicians
• The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists
• The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia
To find out more or become involved:
www.choosingwisely.org.au
twitter.com/ChooseWiselyAu
choosingwisely@nps.org.au