Seeking Reviewers for the Health Care Innovation Challenge

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:04:55 GMT

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation is currently recruiting reviewers nationally to serve on evaluation panels for the Health Care Innovation Challenge. SFMS encourages our physician members to apply to participate.

The Health Care Innovation Challenge (Innovation Challenge) is an exciting new initiative designed to test a wide range of innovations in communities across the country in order to accelerate system-wide health care transformation across our nation.

Applications for review will be accessed electronically via a web-based system, and the entire review process will take place remotely from your location; travel is not required. An honorarium of $500 to non-Federal employees will be offered for successful participation in the process. The review will take place February 16 – February 29, during which time you will need to be available to read and score the applications. The timeline for evaluation is as follows:

February 16 or 17 – Attend one mandatory training conference call session (2 hours)
February 21 – February 29 – Remote Scoring/Commenting/Paneling
February 27 – 28 – Panel Conference Call Days (complete schedule availability is required)

To apply, please visit http://innovations.cms.gov/initiatives/innovation-challenge/index.html.

Cancer Screening Reform Needed

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:43:56 GMT

Since the National Cancer Institute developed the first guidelines on mammography screening over thirty years ago, advocacy and professional groups have developed guidelines focused on who should be screened, instead of communicating clearly the risks and benefits of screening, according to a commentary by Michael Edward Stefanek, PhD, the associate vice president of collaborative research in the office of the vice president at Indiana University, published online on November 21 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Stefanek writes that too much time has been spent debating guidelines, instead of ongoing debates about who should be screened. He advocates educating people about the potential harms and benefits of screening. The U.S. Preventative Task Force (USPTS) recommendations against routine mammography for women aged 40-49 sparked controversy followed by more studies on screening, notably a Norwegian study comparing cancer-specific mortality in screened and unscreened women, which found a small and statistically insignificant breast cancer mortality reduction in the screened group. Stefanek writes that "similar ambiguity" exists for prostate cancer screening, noting that the two largest and high quality studies gave conflicting results, with the USPTS recently issuing recommendations against PSA testing in healthy men. The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial reported a 20% relative decrease in lung cancer deaths among subjects undergoing CT scans compared with those receiving chest x-rays, but with the majority of positive results being false positives. Overall this situation leads Stefanek to the conclusion that despite all the analyses to date, we are on unsteady ground when we attempt to dictate who should and shouldn't undergo screening. Stefanek poses the question of what we have taught the public about cancer screening, since the public invariably seems to feel that screening is almost always a good idea and that finding cancer early is the key to saving lives. He cautions that the public may persist in holding a biased view of screening if we continue to engage in guideline debates. Furthermore, new technologies, despite the potential for combating cancer, will likely result in false positives, false negatives, overtreatment, and under treatment, and incur important patient harms. Stefanek writes that we have failed to truly educate the public about cancer screening, and that our approach to screening needs to be reformed. He says engaging patients in shared decision making, tracking the number of patients provided with information related to the harms and benefits of screening instead of just those who are screened, and uniting scientific and advocacy organizations with primary care provider organizations in this effort to inform about costs and benefits is needed. "If we agree on the premise that individuals are supposed to be informed before making medical decisions, including decisions about cancer screening, then the time and talent of such groups could be much better spent educating the public on the harms and benefits of cancer screening," Stefanek writes. "Screening can be very beneficial (or not), and screening messages should reflect the complexity of this decision." Contact: mstefane@iu.edu

San Francisco Medical Society Blog

Seeking Reviewers for the Health Care Innovation Challenge

Cancer Screening Reform Needed