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An inventory of policy levers to reduce low value care: Results of a rapid scoping review

2025· article· en· W4417035900 on OpenAlexafffund
Lindsey M. Warkentin, Lisa Tjosvold, Kenneth Bond

Bibliographic record

VenueHealth Policy · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldHealth Professions
TopicHealthcare cost, quality, practices
Canadian institutionsInstitute of Health Economics
FundersAlberta HealthGovernment of Alberta
KeywordsValue (mathematics)Value-Based PurchasingCapability approachHealthcare systemHealth policyHealthcare policy

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: The continued use of low-value health care consumes system resources and creates unnecessary risk. There are numerous policy levers available to improve appropriateness of care, but a supporting tool is needed to allow for characteristic and evidence comparison. OBJECTIVE: Develop an inventory which catalogues policy levers which support the reduction of low-value care, alongside their effectiveness evidence and implementation factors. METHODS: Information on relevant levers was identified through searches in Medline, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar, with additional targeted searches. An Excel-based inventory was developed with a list of levers, their descriptions, effectiveness outcomes, and implementation considerations. Filters were developed to help identify levers based on key characteristics. The inventory was refined through presentations to and feedback from key stakeholders. RESULTS: The inventory includes 53 levers which may influence clinician or patient behaviour, service provision, fiscal policies, and populations or organizations. Levers were often used across a variety of settings, care providers, and clinical indications, though some levers addressed specific low-value care contexts. Fiscal policy levers or those influencing service provision were more restrictive, while clinician and patient behaviour levers and those aimed at populations or organizations were less restrictive. Evidence was identified for 40 levers, with 9 levers considered high impact (> 5 % change to behaviour, utilization, or cost) or consistently supported (> 10 studies, the majority reporting desired effects). CONCLUSION: This inventory can support health systems in addressing low-value care, through the ability to compare policy levers and select those applicable to the particular context.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.151
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.255
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: Systematic review
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.151
Threshold uncertainty score0.800

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.1510.255
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0030.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0060.013
Bibliometrics0.0460.047
Science and technology studies0.0020.002
Scholarly communication0.0130.011
Open science0.0030.009
Research integrity0.0030.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.001

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.

Opus teacher head0.584
GPT teacher head0.657
Teacher spread0.073 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreReview

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".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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