Approximately 30 percent of health care costs (more than $750 billion annually) are spent on wasted care, according to the American College of Physicians (ACP). The ACP is committed to reducing unsustainable financial burdens to our health care system and believes that it is the responsibility of medical professionals to become cost-conscious and decrease unnecessary care that does not benefit patients.

To help physicians provide the best possible care to their patients while reducing unnecessary health care costs, the ACP has developed the High Value Care (HVC) initiative, which implements high value care principles.

The ACP recently launched an HVC website for physicians, which focuses on optimal diagnostic and treatment strategies designed to prevent wasted care. The website includes ACP Guidelines and Clinical Recommendations designed to help physicians understand the benefits, harms, and costs of interventions and to determine whether services provide good value. The goal is to help physicians determine whether their patients? quality of care would be negatively affected if certain tests and care options were eliminated.

Through the site, physicians can access curriculum, interactive case studies, medical news, public policy recommendations, and an ethics manual. There is also a Patient Resources page, designed to help patients understand the benefits, harms, and costs of tests and treatments for common clinical issues.

The HVC curriculum covers relevant and timely topics such as eliminating health care waste, over-ordering of tests, overcoming barriers to high value care, and high value medication prescribing. It was jointly developed by the ACP and the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine in an effort to train physicians to be good stewards of limited health care resources. The curriculum can be completed in six hours and includes audio/video content. It is available at http://hvc.acponline.org/curriculum.html.

For more information, please visit the HCV website at hvc.acponline.org.