DER provides a prevalence-sensitive, frequency-based representation of diagnostic benefit relative to harm, reframing diagnostic accuracy in efficiency-oriented terms by expressing how effectively testing effort is converted into discriminative gain beyond chance relative to misclassification burden. This conceptual and illustrative evaluation supports DER's coherence and potential stewardship utility as a complement to traditional diagnostic accuracy metrics. Ultimately, the DER helps to recast diagnostic performance as an efficiency problem, aligning it with modern value-based healthcare and stewardship priorities.
Matthew L. Rubinstein (Thu,) studied this question.