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SAN DIEGO – The American Academy of Dermatology’s policies that regulate conflicts of interest among members of its guidelines panels are “pretty good, but could be improved,” Lionel G. Bercovitch, MD, said at the annual meeting of the American Academy Dermatology.
One positive step might be to tighten the current American Academy of Dermatology requirement that more than half of the members in clinical guideline work groups be free of any financial conflicts and the minimum be raised to a higher percentage, such as more than 70%, suggested Dr. Bercovitch, a professor of dermatology at Brown University, Providence, R.I.
But his concern over the adequacy of existing conflict barriers during the writing of clinical guidelines wasn’t shared by Clifford Perlis, MD, who countered that “there are reasons not to waste too much time wringing our hands over conflicts of interest.”
He offered four reasons to support his statement:
- Conflicts of interest are ubiquitous and thus impossible to eliminate.
- Excluding working group members with conflicts can deprive the guidelines of valuable expertise.
- Checks and balances that are already in place in guideline development prevent inappropriate influence from conflicts of interest.
- No evidence has shown that conflicts of interest have inappropriately influenced development of treatment guidelines.
Conflicts of interest may not be as well managed as AAD policies suggest, Dr. Bercovitch noted. He cited a report published in late 2017 that tallied the actual conflicts of 49 people who served as the authors of three AAD guidelines published during 2013-2016. To objectively double check each author’s conflicts the researchers used the Open Payments database run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (JAMA Dermatol. 2017 Dec;153[12]:1229-35).
The analysis showed that 40 of the 49 authors (82%) had received some amount of industry payment, 63% had received more than $1,000, and 51% had received more than $10,000. The median amount received from industry was just over $33,000. The analysis also showed that 22 of the 40 authors who received an industry payment had disclosure statements for the guideline they participated in that did not agree with the information in the Open Payments database.
“The AAD relies on information obtained through its self-reported online member disclosure system. This internal system collects updates to disclosed relationships on a real-time, ongoing basis, allowing the AAD to regularly assess any changes,” wrote Dr. Lim and his coauthors. “This provides information in a more meaningful and time-sensitive way” than the Open Payments database. In addition, the Open Payments database “is known to be inaccurate,” while the AAD “relies on information obtained through its self-reported online member disclosure system.” This includes an assessment of the relevancy of the conflict to the guideline involved. “This critical evaluation of relevancy was not addressed in the authors’ analysis,” they added.
They reported an adjusted analysis of the percentage of authors with relevant conflicts for each of the guidelines examined in the initial study. The percentages shrank to zero, 40%, and 43% of the authors with relevant conflicts, percentages that fell within the AAD’s ceiling for an acceptable percentage of work group members with conflicts.
The discussion on this topic was presented during a forum on dermatoethics at the meeting, structured as a debate in which presenters are assigned an ethical argument or point-of-view to discuss and defend. The position taken by the speaker need not (and often does not) correspond to the speaker’s personal views.
SAN DIEGO – The American Academy of Dermatology’s policies that regulate conflicts of interest among members of its guidelines panels are “pretty good, but could be improved,” Lionel G. Bercovitch, MD, said at the annual meeting of the American Academy Dermatology.
One positive step might be to tighten the current American Academy of Dermatology requirement that more than half of the members in clinical guideline work groups be free of any financial conflicts and the minimum be raised to a higher percentage, such as more than 70%, suggested Dr. Bercovitch, a professor of dermatology at Brown University, Providence, R.I.
But his concern over the adequacy of existing conflict barriers during the writing of clinical guidelines wasn’t shared by Clifford Perlis, MD, who countered that “there are reasons not to waste too much time wringing our hands over conflicts of interest.”
He offered four reasons to support his statement:
- Conflicts of interest are ubiquitous and thus impossible to eliminate.
- Excluding working group members with conflicts can deprive the guidelines of valuable expertise.
- Checks and balances that are already in place in guideline development prevent inappropriate influence from conflicts of interest.
- No evidence has shown that conflicts of interest have inappropriately influenced development of treatment guidelines.
Conflicts of interest may not be as well managed as AAD policies suggest, Dr. Bercovitch noted. He cited a report published in late 2017 that tallied the actual conflicts of 49 people who served as the authors of three AAD guidelines published during 2013-2016. To objectively double check each author’s conflicts the researchers used the Open Payments database run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (JAMA Dermatol. 2017 Dec;153[12]:1229-35).
The analysis showed that 40 of the 49 authors (82%) had received some amount of industry payment, 63% had received more than $1,000, and 51% had received more than $10,000. The median amount received from industry was just over $33,000. The analysis also showed that 22 of the 40 authors who received an industry payment had disclosure statements for the guideline they participated in that did not agree with the information in the Open Payments database.
“The AAD relies on information obtained through its self-reported online member disclosure system. This internal system collects updates to disclosed relationships on a real-time, ongoing basis, allowing the AAD to regularly assess any changes,” wrote Dr. Lim and his coauthors. “This provides information in a more meaningful and time-sensitive way” than the Open Payments database. In addition, the Open Payments database “is known to be inaccurate,” while the AAD “relies on information obtained through its self-reported online member disclosure system.” This includes an assessment of the relevancy of the conflict to the guideline involved. “This critical evaluation of relevancy was not addressed in the authors’ analysis,” they added.
They reported an adjusted analysis of the percentage of authors with relevant conflicts for each of the guidelines examined in the initial study. The percentages shrank to zero, 40%, and 43% of the authors with relevant conflicts, percentages that fell within the AAD’s ceiling for an acceptable percentage of work group members with conflicts.
The discussion on this topic was presented during a forum on dermatoethics at the meeting, structured as a debate in which presenters are assigned an ethical argument or point-of-view to discuss and defend. The position taken by the speaker need not (and often does not) correspond to the speaker’s personal views.
SAN DIEGO – The American Academy of Dermatology’s policies that regulate conflicts of interest among members of its guidelines panels are “pretty good, but could be improved,” Lionel G. Bercovitch, MD, said at the annual meeting of the American Academy Dermatology.
One positive step might be to tighten the current American Academy of Dermatology requirement that more than half of the members in clinical guideline work groups be free of any financial conflicts and the minimum be raised to a higher percentage, such as more than 70%, suggested Dr. Bercovitch, a professor of dermatology at Brown University, Providence, R.I.
But his concern over the adequacy of existing conflict barriers during the writing of clinical guidelines wasn’t shared by Clifford Perlis, MD, who countered that “there are reasons not to waste too much time wringing our hands over conflicts of interest.”
He offered four reasons to support his statement:
- Conflicts of interest are ubiquitous and thus impossible to eliminate.
- Excluding working group members with conflicts can deprive the guidelines of valuable expertise.
- Checks and balances that are already in place in guideline development prevent inappropriate influence from conflicts of interest.
- No evidence has shown that conflicts of interest have inappropriately influenced development of treatment guidelines.
Conflicts of interest may not be as well managed as AAD policies suggest, Dr. Bercovitch noted. He cited a report published in late 2017 that tallied the actual conflicts of 49 people who served as the authors of three AAD guidelines published during 2013-2016. To objectively double check each author’s conflicts the researchers used the Open Payments database run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (JAMA Dermatol. 2017 Dec;153[12]:1229-35).
The analysis showed that 40 of the 49 authors (82%) had received some amount of industry payment, 63% had received more than $1,000, and 51% had received more than $10,000. The median amount received from industry was just over $33,000. The analysis also showed that 22 of the 40 authors who received an industry payment had disclosure statements for the guideline they participated in that did not agree with the information in the Open Payments database.
“The AAD relies on information obtained through its self-reported online member disclosure system. This internal system collects updates to disclosed relationships on a real-time, ongoing basis, allowing the AAD to regularly assess any changes,” wrote Dr. Lim and his coauthors. “This provides information in a more meaningful and time-sensitive way” than the Open Payments database. In addition, the Open Payments database “is known to be inaccurate,” while the AAD “relies on information obtained through its self-reported online member disclosure system.” This includes an assessment of the relevancy of the conflict to the guideline involved. “This critical evaluation of relevancy was not addressed in the authors’ analysis,” they added.
They reported an adjusted analysis of the percentage of authors with relevant conflicts for each of the guidelines examined in the initial study. The percentages shrank to zero, 40%, and 43% of the authors with relevant conflicts, percentages that fell within the AAD’s ceiling for an acceptable percentage of work group members with conflicts.
The discussion on this topic was presented during a forum on dermatoethics at the meeting, structured as a debate in which presenters are assigned an ethical argument or point-of-view to discuss and defend. The position taken by the speaker need not (and often does not) correspond to the speaker’s personal views.
EXPERT ANALYSIS FROM AAD 18