Identifying Existing Choosing Wisely Recommendations of High Relevance and Importance to Hematology

Choosing Wisely (CW) is a medical stewardship initiative led by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation in collaboration with professional medical societies in the United States. In an effort to learn from and leverage the work of others, the American Society of Hematology CW Task Force developed a method to identify and prioritize CW recommendations from other medical societies of high relevance and importance to patients with blood disorders and their physicians. All 380 CW recommendations were reviewed and assessed for relevance and importance. Relevance was assessed using the MORETM relevance scale. Importance was assessed with regard to six guiding principles: harm avoidance, evidence, aggregate cost, relevance, frequency and impact. Harm avoidance was considered the most important principle. Ten highly relevant and important recommendations were identified from a variety of professional societies. Recommendations focused on decreasing unnecessary imaging, blood work, treatments and transfusions, as well as on increasing collaboration across disciplines and considering value when recommending treatments. Many CW recommendations have relevance beyond the society of origin. The methods developed by the ASH CW Task Force could be easily adapted by other Societies to identify additional CW recommendations of relevance and importance to their fields. Am. J. Hematol. 91:787–792, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.