Clinical Practice Guidelines: Still Conflicted After All These Years

ConclusionFinancial relationships between organizations that produce clinical practice guidelines and the biomedical industry appear to be common. These relationships are important because they may influence, through guideline usage, the practice of large numbers of healthcare providers. We believe that to effectively manage conflicts of interest, organizations that produce clinical practice guidelines need to develop robust conflict of interest policies that include procedures for managing violations of the policy, make the policies publicly available, and disclose all financial relationships with biomedical companies.Editorialists' ConclusionThe editorial by Bastian(2) was sharper in tone.  It included an observation that reinforced my confession of naivete above:With hindsight, I think those of us encouraging better methodology for guideline development in the 1990s took the issue of disclosure of financial interests too much for granted. It seemed so self-evident, it got barely a mention even in national policy on guideline developmentShe also noted that the Campsall study did not address all the ways conflicts of interest can influence guideline development:Stelfox and colleagues focus particularly on the organizational conflicts of interest of guideline producers and their policies. They examine the financial interests of the organizations, but not of the individuals employed within those organizations. This same blind spot is evident when it comes to policies abou...

Source: Health Care Renewal - June 3, 2016 Category: Health Management Tags: conflicts of interest guidelines Institute of Medicine institutional conflicts of interest Source Type: blogs