There is a growing awareness that resources are wasted in clinical practice through the overutilisation of health services, whenever interventions of low clinical value are used or, alternatively, when effective ones are adopted but in clinical indications in which their risk/benefit profile is unfavourable. However, tackling health services overuse is challenging, and several practical, methodological, and policy problems have to be overcome to allow the assessment of its prevalence, the identification of its main determinants and, eventually, design and implementation of interventions able to achieve the desirable changes in clinical practice. The presentation is aimed at exploring some of those aspects, outlining how they are addressed in the Local Health Authority of Reggio Emilia, the local organisation of the Italian NHS responsible for the provision of care to the 500,000 residents of that province.