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Rigorous Development does not Ensure that Guidelines are Acceptable to a Panel of Knowledgeable Providers

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Abstract

BACKGROUND

Rigorous guideline development methods are designed to produce recommendations that are relevant to common clinical situations and consistent with evidence and expert understanding, thereby promoting guidelines’ acceptability to providers. No studies have examined whether this technical quality consistently leads to acceptability.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the clinical acceptability of guidelines having excellent technical quality.

DESIGN AND MEASUREMENTS

We selected guidelines covering several musculoskeletal disorders and meeting 5 basic technical quality criteria, then used the widely accepted AGREE Instrument to evaluate technical quality. Adapting an established modified Delphi method, we assembled a multidisciplinary panel of providers recommended by their specialty societies as leaders in the field. Panelists rated acceptability, including “perceived comprehensiveness” (perceived relevance to common clinical situations) and “perceived validity” (consistency with their understanding of existing evidence and opinions), for ten common condition/therapy pairs pertaining to Surgery, physical therapy, and chiropractic manipulation for lumbar spine, shoulder, and carpal tunnel disorders.

RESULTS

Five guidelines met selection criteria. Their AGREE scores were generally high indicating excellent technical quality. However, panelists found 4 guidelines to be only moderately comprehensive and valid, and a fifth guideline to be invalid overall. Of the topics covered by each guideline, panelists rated 50% to 69% as “comprehensive” and 6% to 50% as “valid”.

CONCLUSION

Despite very rigorous development methods compared with guidelines assessed in prior studies, experts felt that these guidelines omitted common clinical situations and contained much content of uncertain validity. Guideline acceptability should be independently and formally evaluated before dissemination.

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Acknowledgements

Christine Baker, M.A., Executive Officer of the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation and Anne Searcy, M.D., Medical Director of the California Division of Workers’ Compensation participated in the study conception and design (specifically, choosing the inclusion criteria for the guidelines). Paul G. Shekelle, M.D, Ph.D., The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica; Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, Department of Medicine David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles; and VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, California, provided comments on a draft of this manuscript. This study was sponsored by the California Department of Industrial Relations (the Division of Workers Compensation and the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation). The RAND Corporation provided support for the preparation of this manuscript. Although Christine Baker and Anne Searcy, Division of Workers’ Compensation participated in the study conception and design, data acquisition, analysis, and preparation of this manuscript were completely independent of the funders.

Conflicts of Interest

None disclosed.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA

    Teryl K. Nuckols MD, MSHS, Yee-Wei Lim MD, PhD, Barbara O. Wynn MA, Soeren Mattke MD, DSc, Robert H. Brook MD, ScD, Rena H. Garland & Steven Asch MD, MPH

  2. Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Teryl K. Nuckols MD, MSHS, Robert H. Brook MD, ScD & Steven Asch MD, MPH

  3. WellPoint Incorporated, Thousand Oaks, CA, USA

    Catherine H. MacLean MD, PhD

  4. Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Department of Family Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Philip Harber MD, MPH

  5. ACS Healthcare Solutions Incorporated, Playa del Rey, CA, USA

    Peggy Wallace RN, MA, MS

  6. VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angles, CA, USA

    Steven Asch MD, MPH

Authors
  1. Teryl K. Nuckols MD, MSHS
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  2. Yee-Wei Lim MD, PhD
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  3. Barbara O. Wynn MA
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  4. Soeren Mattke MD, DSc
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  5. Catherine H. MacLean MD, PhD
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  6. Philip Harber MD, MPH
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  7. Robert H. Brook MD, ScD
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  8. Peggy Wallace RN, MA, MS
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  9. Rena H. Garland
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  10. Steven Asch MD, MPH
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Teryl K. Nuckols MD, MSHS.

Additional information

This document includes content previously published in a RAND report, available online at: http://www.rand.org/publications/MG/MG400/.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 and 7

Table 6 Panel Judgments Regarding Perceived Comprehensiveness for 16 Selected Topics, Any Residual Content Aside from Those 16 Topics, and Overall (C = Comprehensive, I = Intermediate, NC = Not Comprehensive)
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Table 7 Panel Judgments Regarding Perceived Validity for 16 Selected Topics, Any Residual Content Aside from Those 16 Topics, and Overall
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Nuckols, T.K., Lim, YW., Wynn, B.O. et al. Rigorous Development does not Ensure that Guidelines are Acceptable to a Panel of Knowledgeable Providers. J GEN INTERN MED 23, 37–44 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-007-0440-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-007-0440-9

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