Eliminating the delivery of unnecessary medical procedures is widely considered to be one of the keys to lowering healthcare costs. A new initiative from the American Board of Internal Medicine seeks to tackle the problem.

The group recently partnered with Consumer Reports to launch the Choosing Wisely campaign, according to Healthcare IT News. The initiative sets out to get patients talking with their physicians more about the necessity of every proposed procedure.

Officials said that physicians already have access to clinical evidence, and should know whether or not a treatment is absolutely necessary. However, this program seeks to bring this information to the patients in order to start two-way conversations.

"In some ways the combination of recognizing the cost of care with also recognizing [that] a lot of times unnecessary medical care actually leads to harm - the combination of those two things really makes this moment in time a real opportunity to make progress," Christine Cassel, the board's president and CEO, told the news source.

The effort may complement the growing use of electronic health records and clinical decision support systems, both of which have been shown to increase the likelihood a doctor will deliver evidence-based care.