Choosing Wisely®: Building a Statewide Pilot Program

Choosing Wisely®, an initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation, released its first list of “Things Providers and Patients Should Question” in 2012. This campaign works with different organizations and specialties and is designed to spark conversations between providers and patients to ensure that the right care is delivered at the right time. Consumer Reports concurrently has developed and disseminated patient materials to assist in engaging in conversations with their health care provider, empowering them to ask questions about appropriate testing and procedures.  To date, the Choosing Wisely® campaign has engaged nearly 100 national and state medical and nursing specialty societies, regional health collaboratives and consumer organizations, identifying over 300 tests and procedures that have been described as overused and inappropriate.

The American Academy of Nursing (AAN) announced in October 2014 their collaboration with the ABIM and release of their first five nursing focused statements. Texas was selected by the AAN to pilot the nursing initiative in 2015. The Texas model will then be replicated nationally.

The Texas Choosing Wisely® campaign is being funded in part by the Promise of Nursing for Texas Grant Program administered by the Foundation of the National Student Nurses’ Association. Funding for the grant program was contributed by several hospitals and health care agencies in the Texas area, by Johnson & Johnson, and by national companies with an interest in supporting nursing education.  The funds were raised at gala fundraising event sponsored by Johnson & Johnson.

As part of this initiative in Texas, the Texas Team Advancing Health through Nursing selected a core team that worked to build a coalition by seeking out out a diverse group of stakeholders. The core team also developed a charter to guide and support the newly developed steering committee. This coalition and charter were developed and implemented to support the dissemination of the Choosing Wisely® information to all Texans, including healthcare providers and organizations, patients and families, payers, and policy makers.