Why Doctors Still Perform Unnecessary Medical Tests

Source: US News & World Report, May 27, 2015 A recent Health Affairs article, authored by David Asch and Peter Ubel, offers psychological explanations for why it is difficult for clinicians to “‘de-innovate,’ or give up old practices, even when new evidence reveals that those practices offer little value.” To overcome the resistance to de-innovation, Asch and Ubel recommended that the task force’s guideline development committees be made up of medical experts from a wide variety of domains with different clinical expertise so that they can cancel out each other’s conformation bias.