US Preventive Services Task Force now taking comments before issuing recommendations

July 6, 2010

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is now publishing proposed guidelines and asking for public comment for a month before issuing final guidelines, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. 

According to the report, a spokeswoman for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality says these changes are not a direct response to the brouhaha over the breast-cancer screening guidelines, which were released last fall, but were already in the works.  However, the chair of the USPSTF says that the reaction to the breast-cancer recommendations prompted an early implementation of the new policy.

Previously, the USPSTF had simply published the final guidelines, along with a review of the evidence used as the basis for the decision. But now those guidelines will first be posted in draft form on the USPSTF’s website, while the evidence review is published in final form in a medical journal, as usual. There will be a four week public comment period for the USPSTF’s draft recommendations, and comments will be considered before final recommendations are published.