Choosing Wisely®

Promoting conversations between patients and clinicians

The Choosing Wisely® campaign is one of our most well-known initiatives. The goal of the campaign is to promote conversations between clinicians and patients by helping patients choose care that is:

  • Supported by evidence
  • Not duplicative of other tests or procedures already received
  • Free from harm
  • Truly necessary

It calls upon leading medical specialty societies and other organizations to identify tests or procedures commonly used in their field whose necessity should be questioned and discussed with patients.

The effort has garnered the participation of over 80 medical specialty societies who have published more than 600 recommendations of overused tests and treatments that clinicians and patients should discuss. The campaign and society recommendations have been included in nearly 300 journal articles and more than 10,000 media articles since the program launched in 2012.