HHS Plans to Delete 20 Years of Critical Medical Guidelines Next Week.

[Cattledog]

EVIL

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.

Medical guidelines like those compiled by AHRQ aren’t something laypeople spend much time thinking about, but experts like 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, said the NGC is perhaps the most important repository of evidence-based research available.

“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,” King added.

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.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/hhs-plans-to-delete-20-years-of-critical-medical-guidelines-next-week?via=FB_Page&source=TDB

[Phoenix61]

1. This makes absolutely no sense

It's just pure mean spirited evilness.

[procon]

2. This will allow insurance companies to deny treatment and refuse to pay

for medical care because "there is no guidelines" is justify the treatment. It will also allow unethical doctors and the facilities they work at to deny treatment to patients for the same reason. Follow the money, people.

[BigmanPigman]

3. That is the reasoning behind it...now I see it clearly.

I HATE HIM and the GOP with every cell of my body!

[lostnfound]

4. My conclusion as well.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Well, great. Hope someone managed to archive portions of it.

Kind of hard to do anything when the announcement goes public the same day it shuts down.