Overuse refers to which of the following?

• A. It describes a lack of benefit to the patient only.
• B. Overuse refers to situations where a patient is unlikely to benefit from a service, or when a provider prescribes a health care intervention even though it will not improve outcomes or quality of care.
• C. Overuse means patients are unable to access needed services.
• D. Overuse is only related to imaging studies.

Answer: (B)

Overuse in healthcare means providing a service when the patient is unlikely to benefit or when it will not improve outcomes or quality of care. This captures both giving unnecessary interventions and those that don’t actually help, which wastes resources and can even cause harm through unnecessary tests, side effects, or false positives. For example, ordering imaging or treatments with little chance of benefit or prescribing care that won’t improve a patient’s health falls squarely under overuse.

Why this is the best answer: it explicitly includes both scenarios—no meaningful benefit to the patient and no improvement in outcomes or quality—covering the core idea of overuse as wasteful, low-value care.

The other descriptions are narrower or describe different problems: focusing only on lack of benefit to the patient misses the broader outcome and quality impact; describing underuse refers to not providing needed care; and limiting overuse to imaging ignores that overuse can occur with many types of services.