Urinary Catheters for Inguinal Hernia Repair—The Challenges of Deimplementation of Routine Procedures

Low-value services are ubiquitous in health care. It is estimated that the US alone spends more than $100 billion annually on unnecessary medical tests, treatments, and procedures that expose patients to harms without apparent benefit. Deimplementation has proven difficult, despite campaigns such as Choosing Wisely. Perhaps the most important barrier to deimplementation is lack of evidence. Collecting evidence on routinely performed practices is hard work, time-consuming, and expensive. Further, research into deimplementation seldom attracts major funding, and it can be difficult to interest neither the public nor the profession.