Appropriate use criteria
Open-knowledge reference entry
Appropriate use criteria (AUC), sometimes referred to as appropriateness criteria (AC), specify when it is appropriate to perform a medical procedure or service. An "appropriate" procedure is one for which the expected health benefits exceed the expected health risks by a wide margin. Ideally, AUC are evidence-based, but in the absence of sufficient evidence, may be derived from a consensus of expert opinion. AUC are typically classified in terms of the quality of the evidence on which they are based. In general, AUC are promulgated by medical specialty organizations (professional societies). The definition of "appropriate" is subject to interpretation. For example, a key issue is whether or not a procedure or investigation can be deemed appropriate if it does not result in a change in management.
Relative costs of alternative appropriate procedures may or may not be considered in selecting a procedure for an individual patient, but in there is evidence that performing only appropriate procedures reduces volume and cost. To reduce the cost of (advanced) diagnostic imaging tests, a requirement for the use of clinical decision support for was included in the Protecting Access to Medicare Act of 2014, though it does not apply to emergency or inpatient services.
AUC are not always consistent between sources, or with other guidelines, or with reimbursement decisions.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2021. The linked authority identifier is Q3620947. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Appropriate use criteria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.