Quaternary prevention is the prevention of unnecessary medicine or the prevention of overmedicalisation. The principle of “primum non nocere” is central to the whole of medicine. The task to avoid excess medical interventions is particularly mandatory in the field of general practice. We report on a workshop on this topic held at the 15th Wonca Europe Conference in Basel, in September 2009. In ...

FOREWORD This paper is intended to stimulate discussion on ways in which the objectives of the Primary Health Care Strategy may be further progressed. It has made available to the Ministry of Health to serve as a resource for ongoing policy work. The paper provides a high-level discussion of a range of future directions for the Strategy, largely within the current institutional framework. It do...

OBJECTIVES There has been significant research on provider attribution for quality and cost. Low-value care is an area of heightened focus, with little of the focus being on measurement; a key methodological decision is how to attribute delivered services and procedures. We illustrate the difference in relative and absolute physician- and panel-attributed services and procedures using overuse i...