NIH consensus conferences
n Study evaluating the NIH Consensus Development
program – Rand Corporation – David Kanouse
n Used medical record review (behavior) to examine
changes in hospital-based procedures that were
subject of conference
n Physician’s self-reported preferred practices were
strongly related to what actually did
n Although program’s dissemination effort was
moderately successful at reaching the appropriate
target audience
n the conferences mostly failed to stimulate changes in
physicians’ practices.
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