Avoiding ineffective treatment - Grattan report

Questionable care: avoiding ineffective treatment is a report from Stephen Duckett and Peter Breadon at the Grattan Institute. They argue that some Australian hospitals are still providing treatments that are unnecessary or ineffective and that Australia needs a system to identify these outlier hospitals.

The report looks at five treatments which should not be used on some patients, such as treating osteoarthritis of the knee with an arthroscope, filling a vertebrae with cement to treat fractures and putting patients in pressurised oxygen chambers.  "Expert guidance labels most of these five treatments do-not-do, yet in 2010-11 nearly 6000 people – or 16 people a day – received them."

The authors argue that the these treatments are not managed well by the health system, which often offers incentives for extra, ineffective care.  They call for more awareness and policies to prevent this happening.