I think you may be missing the larger point the authors are trying to make. It's more nuanced. For every item on a treatment pathway, ask if there is peer reviewed evidence backed by a randomized clinical trial (where possible) to support it. If not, consider doing one.
For evidence of harms done by medical reversal, see the other thread as well as consider reading the book "Ending Medical Reversal" by one of the authors Adam Cifu.
Also consider following them on twitter if this topic is of interest (Adam Cifu, Vinay Prasad et al).
Your first two sentences aren't supported by the rest of your comment because I'm not rejecting the entire article. (I don't disagree with any of that other stuff you wrote.) I'm just criticizing the implicit assumption that medical reversals are necessarily evidence of a mistake.
Indeed, from the second paragraph (emphasis mine):
> Medical reversals are a subset of low-value medical practices and are defined as practices that have been found, through randomized controlled trials, to be no better than a prior or lesser standard of care (Prasad et al., 2013; Prasad et al., 2011).
That is, the authors assert that something is low value if it is later proven to not work.
Trying to understand here: is the medical reversal itself which causes harm, or is the harm caused by all the time spent pursuing the wrong treatment before the reversal?
That will depend on the treatment in question. In some cases, the practice is harmful per se. In other cases, it's not harmful per se, but will prevent a better treatment option from being deployed.
Finally, it might prefer people from supplementing the care with additional practices that are of value due to cost, even when not directly preventing it.
