A “Top Five” list for emergency medicine: a policy and research agenda for stewardship to improve the value of emergency care

Abstract

United States health care costs are growing at an unsustainable rate; one significant contributor has been the overuse of health services. Physicians have a professional ethical obligation to serve as stewards of society’s resources and take responsibility for health care costs. We propose a framework for identifying overused services and a research and implementation agenda to guide stewardship efforts to demonstrate the value of emergency care. Examples of interventions to reduce the cost of emergency care along six value streams are discussed: laboratory tests, high-cost imaging, medication administration, intravenous fluids and medications, hospital admissions and post-discharge care. Structural and political hurdles such as the Emergency Medical and Active Labor Act mandate, medico-legal concerns, lack of provider knowledge about costs and economic conflicts are identified. A research agenda focused on identifying low value clinical actions and potential interventions for overuse reduction is detailed. A policy agenda is proposed for organized emergency medicine to convene a structured, collaborative process to identify and prioritize clinical decisions that are of little value to patients, amenable to improvement through standardization, and actionable by front-line providers. Emergency medicine cannot wait longer to identify areas of low value care, or else other groups will impose external standards on our practice. Development of a Top Five list for emergency medicine will begin to demonstrate our professional ethical commitment to our patients and health system improvement.