Does My Patient Need Routine Labs?

Physician trainees often are evaluated on how they practice cost-effective care. Still, ordering unnecessary routine laboratory testing persists. In this study, 80 internal medicine residents in Philadelphia received e-mail links to a dashboard that contained real-time individualized feedback on their use of routine laboratory tests relative to service averages during 6 months.

E-mails were opened by 74% of residents, and 21% opened the dashboard links. No significant difference was noted in lab ordering between residents who opened the dashboard links and those who did not. Participants who deviated from the service average by 1 standard deviation in either direction were more significantly likely to open their links to the dashboard. Parti…