clear that it does not want to be told what medical care it can and cannot have." Uwe Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton, said "the minute you attack overutilization, you will be called a Nazi before the day is out". Professional societies and other groups have begun to push for policy changes that would encourage clinicians to avoid providing unnecessary care. Most physicians accept that laboratory tests are overused, but "it remains difficult to persuade them to consider the possibility that they, too, might be overutilizing laboratory tests." In November 2011, the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation began the Choosing Wisely campaign, which aims to raise awareness of overtreatment and change physician behavior by publicizing lists of tests and treatments that are often overused, and which doctors and patients should try to avoid. In the UK, 2011, online platform AskMyGP was launched to decrease the amount of unnecessary medical appointments. In the app patients are given a questionnaire about their symptoms, which then assesses the patient's need for medical care. The program was a success, and as of January 2018 has managed over 29,000 patient episodes. In April 2012, the Lown Institute and the New America Foundation Health Policy Program convened the 'Avoiding Avoidable Care' conference. It was the first major medical conference to focus entirely on overuse, and it included presentations from speakers including Bernard Lown, Don Berwick, Christine Cassel, Amitabh Chandra, JudyAnn Bigby, and Julio Frenk. A second meeting was planned for December 2013. Since the meeting, the Lown Institute has focused its work on deepening the understanding of overuse and generating public discussion of the ethical and cultural drivers of overuse, especially on the role of the hidden curriculum in medical school and residency. Patient safety committees, which are charged with reviewing the quality of care, can view overutilization as adverse event. Consumer cost sharing See also Medicare fraud Moral hazard Antibiotic misuse Choosing Wisely Overmedicalization Overdiagnosis References Citations Sources – a story on the study External links Disease Creep: How we're fooled into using more medicine than we need by medical investigative journalist Jeanne Lenzer Health economics