Low-Value Transthoracic Echocardiography, Healthcare Utilization, and Clinical Outcomes in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The relationship between ordering frequency of rarely appropriate transthoracic echocardiograms on healthcare utilization and patient outcomes in coronary artery disease (CAD) is not known. Our objective was to investigate practice patterns of cardiologists who order a high frequency of low-value transthoracic echocardiograms in patients with CAD and whether practice behavior influences patient outcomes. METHODS AND RESULTS: A retrospective cohort of outpatient CAD patients was accrued by identifying patients with at least 1 visit to 1 of 35 Ontario-based cardiologists in the EchoWISELY randomized clinical trial (Will Inappropriate Scenarios for Echocardiography Lessen Significantly) control group. The main outcomes of interest were patient-level receipt of diagnostic tests, physician visits, medication prescriptions, and clinical outcomes at 1 year. Our cohort consisted of 3966 patients with CAD (mean [SD] age, 67.8 [12.0] years; 72% men), with an outpatient visit to 1 of 35 eligible cardiologists, stratified into 3 ordering tertiles. Patients of cardiologists in the top ordering tertile of rarely appropriate transthoracic echocardiograms had significantly lower odds of receiving the following services at 1 year compared with patients in the low ordering group: cholesterol assessment (odds ratio [OR], 0.77 [95% CI, 0.65-0.91]); hemoglobin A1c assessment (OR, 0.79 [95% CI, 0.66-0.94]); β-blocker prescription (OR, 0.70 [95% CI, 0.55-0.90]); and aldosterone receptor antagonist prescription (OR, 0.46 [95% CI, 0.22-0.98]). Patients of high ordering cardiologists had greater odds of all-cause mortality at 1 year (OR, 1.54 [95% CI, 1.04-2.28]), although all other outcomes were similar. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with CAD seen by cardiologist who ordered a high rate of rarely appropriate transthoracic echocardiograms were less likely to receive potentially high-value screening tests and evidence-based medications than low ordering cardiologists. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT02038101.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".