{"id":697238,"date":"2026-05-27T05:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T05:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/697238\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T05:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T05:46:10","slug":"nudge-letters-reduced-gp-pathology-requests-by-42000-a-year-lancet-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/697238\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Nudge letters&#8217; reduced GP pathology requests by 42,000 a year: Lancet study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>GPs who received \u2018nudge letters\u2019 from health officials cut back on frequently ordered pathology requests, according to new research on GPs who did not know they were test subjects.<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Government-funded study found that GPs who received letters saying they were in the 90th percentile for ordering particular tests or test batteries reduced orders for those tests by 36% in the next six months.<\/p>\n<p>The study looked at 10 common pathology batteries, all of which were some combination of iron studies, TSH, vitamin D, vitamin B12 and thyroid function.<\/p>\n<p>GPs received four-page letters if they were both in the top 10% of requestors for such batteries and in the top 10% of requestors for at least two of the five individual tests in 2020\/21.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\u00d7<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tSign in\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"d-none message adg-password-reset\">\n\t\t\t\tIf this is your first visit to the new AusDoc website, reset your password<br \/>\n\t\t\t\t<a class=\"adg-reset_password_link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ausdoc.com.au\/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">here.<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GPs who received \u2018nudge letters\u2019 from health officials cut back on frequently ordered pathology requests, according to new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,11910,3786,137,8192,44,39767,16570],"class_list":["post-697238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-general-practice","tag-government","tag-health","tag-medicare","tag-news","tag-pathology","tag-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}