Editorial: The New Form of Abuse “Bias Information”

Recently an editorial was published on CME and Bias in a publication of the Joint Implant Surgery and Research Foundation.  The author Timothy McTighe PhD, Executive Director Joint Implant Surgery & Research Foundation has extended his permission to publish the editorial in it’s entirety:

There is a significant movement within the Continuing Medical Educational process to avoid any “bias information”. The recent Justice Department probe and Congressional investigations into the medical device industry has everyone (professional medical societies) running scared and overreacting. There is significant discussion of removing commercial funding from CME to eliminate any bias information. This, in my professional opinion, is an overreaction and will create more problems than it could possible solve.

Let’s look at a few facts that benefit our current system of education. The health Care Industry supports educational activities to the tune of about one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) a year within the United States (WSJ’s blog on health & the business of health 11/15/09). Our first assumption should be this is good because dollars are necessary to put effective teaching and learning tools into place. Imagine for a moment that we did not have this money available to education. How much longer would it take to train and educate our health care professionals? How many patients would suffer longer than necessary if our information on drugs, devices and techniques slowed down?

Who would pick up the financial slack, or would there just be a lag in training and education. The concern should not be that there is an industry supporting education, (thank God we have an industry that can help support educational activities) but focus should be on the process of disclosure not on elimination of funding sources.

I think we should be challenging our industries to increase their funding not looking at demonizing them because they do. We have with the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME® www.accme.org) procedures in place that are effective and do an adequate job with-regard to disclosure of commercial funding. These guidelines and standards need to be living documents that undergo their own review and modifications on an incremental schedule. Drastic or radical change is rarely beneficial.

It is time we challenged the proponents against “Bias Information” to back down and acknowledge all bias information is not bad. This is a term that is being misused and I for one look towards my selection of medical professionals to have strong biases within their practice of medicine. I just want them to disclose their biases.

Lets look at this term: bias A term used to describe a tendency or preference towards a particular perspective, ideology or result.

The key is that bias information should be balanced with other or different perspective “Bias” information so there is a balance of information presented within the content of a given subject matter.

I suggest we all want to hear bias information because this information is often the result of training, experience and results. We don’t necessarily want to hear bias information that is based on monetary reward. However, often presentations and/or publications can have multiple biases within any given subject material. The proper way to inform individuals of “bias” information is through disclosure not by elimination. Only by disclosure can the audience determine if the quality of the information has true merit.

Just the fact of monetary interest does not suggest that the bias presentation does not have significant merit in its content, method and conclusions. The fact that there is a disclosure with regard to monetary benefit to the author should be considered and reviewed from that point of reference.

Example:
A Total Hip Arthroplasty performed with the selection of femoral component being fully porous coated like the “AML® Stem”, suggest that the use of this device demonstrates a preference towards a device with extensive porous coating over the length of a cylinder style stem. Over the years, some surgeons that have lectured on their use of this stem have disclosed the fact that they had a financial interest in the device. This disclosure in no way changed the fact of the long-term clinical results, benefits and/or potential problems related to this device.

In my 39 years in the orthopaedic health care field I have never known any surgeon that has switched his selection of product and/or technique as a result of hearing one bias talk.

I have found just the opposite. Surgeons, because of their own biases due to their training and experience, are reluctant to change. They only change as a result of significant information that addresses a problem or concern they have experienced.

I am bias towards bias information remaining as part of our educational activities and I also continue to indorse the use of commercial funding for CME activities and wish the industry would increase its budget for balanced CME activities.

This is a subject that should be important to all of us involved with health care. Please feel free to contact us with your thoughts, JISRF welcomes all points of view.