[Choosing wisely in internal medicine].

Area of Science:

• Internal Medicine
• Healthcare Quality Improvement

Background:

• Inappropriate patient care poses risks and increases healthcare costs.
• Evidence-based medicine is crucial for optimizing diagnostic and therapeutic decisions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To strengthen the quality of diagnostics and therapy indications within internal medicine.
• To identify and address aspects of inappropriate patient care based on scientific evidence.

Main Methods:

• Collaboration with 12 internal medicine and associated societies to identify care aspects.
• Review and endorsement of identified aspects by an interdisciplinary consensus committee.
• Focus on both underused beneficial and overused harmful interventions.

Main Results:

• Development of positive and negative recommendations for diagnostic and therapeutic measures.
• Identification of interventions with strong evidence for usefulness but rare use.
• Identification of interventions with strong evidence of being not useful or harmful but frequent use.

Conclusions:

• The "Choosing Wisely - DGIM" initiative provides evidence-based recommendations to support physicians' clinical decision-making.
• The initiative aims to reduce inappropriate patient care and improve healthcare quality.
• Physician buy-in is substantial, as confirmed by a survey of 4200 DGIM members.