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HHS Plans To Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week (thedailybeast.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: The Trump Administration is planning to eliminate a vast trove of medical guidelines that for nearly 20 years has been a critical resource for doctors, researchers and others in the medical community. Maintained by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ], part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the database is known as the National Guideline Clearinghouse [NGC], and it's scheduled to "go dark," in the words of an official there, on July 16. "Guideline.gov was our go-to source, and there is nothing else like it in the world," King said, referring to the URL at which the database is hosted, which the agency says receives about 200,000 visitors per month. "It is a singular resource," Valerie King, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Director of Research at the Center for Evidence-based Policy at Oregon Health & Science University, added. [She] said the NGC is perhaps the most important repository of evidence-based research available.
Medical guidelines are best thought of as cheatsheets for the medical field, compiling the latest research in an easy-to use format. When doctors want to know when they should start insulin treatments, or how best to manage an HIV patient in unstable housing -- even something as mundane as when to start an older patient on a vitamin D supplement -- they look for the relevant guidelines. The documents are published by a myriad of professional and other organizations, and NGC has long been considered among the most comprehensive and reliable repositories in the world. AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet. Not even an archived version of the site will remain, according to an official at AHRQ.
Medical guidelines are best thought of as cheatsheets for the medical field, compiling the latest research in an easy-to use format. When doctors want to know when they should start insulin treatments, or how best to manage an HIV patient in unstable housing -- even something as mundane as when to start an older patient on a vitamin D supplement -- they look for the relevant guidelines. The documents are published by a myriad of professional and other organizations, and NGC has long been considered among the most comprehensive and reliable repositories in the world. AHRQ said it's looking for a partner that can carry on the work of NGC, but that effort hasn't panned out yet. Not even an archived version of the site will remain, according to an official at AHRQ.
They just can't stop themselves. Sad.
Nix has been helping coordinate an effort to get some outside stakeholder to take over the site's operations. She said she's still hopeful, and even days before the siteâ(TM)s scheduled demise, AHRQ spokesperson Hunt told the Daily Beast that the search continued.
So if it were truly a valuable resource where are the charities or groups of large insurance firms or hospitals willing to pay for this to be kept up?
The article mentioned how the database had been heavily politicized in the past, is it possible the value of this database is less than we are being told by the article writer?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and anti-science administration. I'm not saying this to troll. We (or the 45% who voter for him) knew exactly what they were getting. Americans have been kicked around non stop for 40 years and unfortunately instead of blaming the billionaires that outsourced their jobs and brought in cheap labor to replace what they couldn't outsource they blamed "elites"; e.g. scientists and college professors. You know, nerds. And, well, this is the result.
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It may have no commercial value, so no-one can make a profit from it.
But it can still have huge social value as general knowledge for medicine.
This is just the kind of thing the government should do.
or hell, even Hilary Clinton. Yeah, she's a right wing corporatists bitch, but at least she isn't openly anti-science. As terrible as she was/is it's always better to pick the lesser of two evils.
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you do know we just spent the last 40 years systematically dismantling the social safety net so we could make way for tax cuts for billionaires, right?
In the entire history of humankind charity has never once solved any problem long term. It's always been civilization in the form of government that did. A few nice people at the middle can't make up for the bad done by folks up at the top. Complex, widespread problems (like public health) need comprehensive solutions done an a society wide scale. You and me dropping change into a plastic bucket twice a year is not a viable solution to the world's problems.
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Not really needed by some pharmaceuticals lobby, maybe?
https://www.propublica.org/art...
Also you should remember:
"Price was the first director of HHS, AHRQ's parent agency, under the Trump Administration, before resigning under pressure last year over his spending on chartered flights."
And of course people appointed by Trump Administration think it's a duplicate. How convenient... Less money spent in research, more budget available for chartered flights!
What I see on Slashdot is an awful lot of non-doctors (myself included) pontificating on this move. Is it really widely used? I don't know. All *I* (and the rest of you) have to go on is the demonstrated value which currently is zero as there are no takers to carry on this data.
Not a doctor yet, but I am a biomedical nerd and aware of how useful those in the research area tend to consider best practices guidelines--and my first question about this actually was "Why is this not at NIH?"
The general rule of thumb is that the lag time is too long between where the research says are the medical best practices and what any published list anywhere will say--part of this is because, to put it bluntly, most doctors aren't particularly into research and don't keep up with it. Those best practices databases aren't going to be getting kept up-to-date and current, and I honestly don't think there's a solution for this short of starting from scratch--if nothing else, because each and every entry should have a date on it saying when it was last checked on and it should be routinely gone into to add data. There is no such thing as too much data if you're trying to figure out what works in which populations; the more you have, the more certain you can be...and the more likely you are to be able to pin down which populations that have strange responses, which is pretty much a basic requirement if you want to do anything more than shrug and move on...and it's also a requirement for improving and fine-tuning the evidence.
2016 was different from 2000. In 2000, Gore won a plurality of the popular vote (but not a majority), and liberal parties (Gore + Nader) won a majority of the popular vote. The Electoral college did not reflect a majority of the popular vote in 2000.
In 2016, Clinton won a plurality (but not a majority) of the popular vote. However, Conservative parties combined won more popular votes than liberal parties combined (49.88% vs 49.13%, with the rest being cast for candidates without a party affiliation). So in 2016, the Electoral College awarded the election to the candidate whose ideology came closest to winning a majority of votes, rather than the individual who came closest to winning a majority. I didn't vote for Trump, but he was probably the correct winner in 2016.
People like to criticize the Electoral College. But IMHO the plurality-wins system they propose be used instead is nearly as bad (consider the California primaries where some candidates won one of two slots in the general election with barely 20% of the vote). We really need to switch to instant run-off voting, which is designed so that a candidate always gets a majority of votes before being declared the winner.
I don't think it's because she's a woman, if that's what you mean. Remember Sarah Palin? And Obama was, well, you know...
There were a few iffy things in her past - nothing proven, but mud sticks. She has the charisma of a tepid lettuce. And the whole dynasty thing, though I suspect we ain't seen nothin' yet on that front.
The survivors in 2050 or so might speak of 1776 as being the First American Revolution.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Probably the best thing to do would be to stop the gerrymandering of the districts. In Canada there is an independent third-party organization that sets the ridings (districts) according to a strict set of rules.
Or Proportional Representation where you add up the votes nation wide and you get a percent of the seats equal to your percent of the votes.
You are absolutely incorrect. I can understand why it doesn't seem like it could impact national elections, but it absolutely does.
Gerrymandering has allowed mostly republicans to hold onto state legislative majorities while receiving far less than half the vote. In 2012 in Wisconsin, Democrats won 52% of the aggregate vote but only 39% of the seats in the Assembly.
That majority in state legislature has allowed republicans to install laws designed to prevent voting, which disproportionately impacts democratic voters. If likely democratic voters aren't allowed to vote at all, national elections are absolutely impacted by gerrymandering.
As a great example, look at Wisconsin. While I know Mother Jones isn't necessarily a great source, feel free to click through and listen to the interview where Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel says:
How many of your listeners really honestly are sure that Sen. Johnson was going to win reelection or President Trump was going to win Wisconsin if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest and have integrity?
It should be noted that you can count the voter fraud convictions in WI over the last decade on one hand. "if we didn’t have voter ID to keep Wisconsin’s elections clean and honest" is absolutely saying, "if we didn't have Voter ID to keep democrats, especially blacks, from voting".
23k-45k voters are estimated to have not been able to vote due to the voter ID law. Trump won the state by 22k votes.
If the state wasn't gerrymandered, that law wouldn't have passed, and those people would have voted. The supreme court has decided to pass on this lawsuit, because apparently the democrats didn't have standing? Apparently it will take someone losing a gerrymandered district to sue, and then proving that it was the gerrymandering that caused it. I.E., gerrymandering by political parties is fine according to the supreme court. That's fucked up, and pretty undemocratic.
But we got a supreme court that thinks this way in part due to gerrymandering. How's that for full circle?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor