Assessing social values for California's efforts to reduce the overuse of unnecessary medical care.

Background: A partnership of large health-care purchasers created a workgroup to reduce the overuse of harmful and wasteful medical care in California.

Objective: Employ a civic engagement process to identify the social values important to the public in considering different strategies to reduce overuse.

Intervention: Use of deliberation techniques for 3 case examples that explore possible strategies: physician oversight, physician compensation, increased patient cost-sharing or taking no definitive action.

Results: Five themes were identified, including strong support for physicians' leadership role to reduce overuse; nuanced enthusiasm for increasing patient cost-sharing to discourage excessive demand; and marked disapproval of physician compensation as a motivator.

Conclusion: Most but not all of the perspectives voiced by participants are congruent with efforts to reduce overuse that is being initiated or discussed at the state, provider and health plan level. As health-care policymakers and leaders consider more targeted approaches to reducing overuse, these findings will inform decision-making.