Insurance Denials: Flawed IDSA Guidelines

Posted on 03. Feb, 2011 by admin in Money Issues

Those of us in the Lyme World are well aware that the IDSA guidelines regarding lyme treatment are seriously flawed.

But did you know that there’s more and more documentation coming to light to PROVE that it’s flawed?

Let’s start with the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office and their response to the IDSA shenanigans:

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal today announced that his antitrust investigation has uncovered serious flaws in the Infectious Diseases Society of America’s (IDSA) process for writing its 2006 Lyme disease guidelines and the IDSA has agreed to reassess them with the assistance of an outside arbiter.

“This agreement vindicates my investigation — finding undisclosed financial interests and forcing a reassessment of IDSA guidelines,” Blumenthal said. “My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists. The IDSA’s guideline panel improperly ignored or minimized consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science.

OK, so we all know by now that the IDSA was able to dance around this agreement, and ultimately just restated that they were going to stick to their guns and maintain the original flawed guidelines instead of making any of the mandated changes.

What about this article from Reuters Health? Seems it adds to the theory that IDSA guidelines are self-serving bunch of hogwash, rather than being based on anything remotely resembling scientific evidence.

Even when following medical guidelines to the letter, doctors often use treatments that have little or no scientific support, U.S. researchers said Monday.

They found only one in seven treatment recommendations from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) — a society representing healthcare providers and researchers across the country — were based on high-quality data from clinical trials.

So, where do we go from here? Seems at a minimum, this should be fodder to add to any arguments to fight insurance denials, since clearly the IDSA is clearly not using scientific evidence in creating its treatment guidelines!

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Tags: idsa, idsa lyme, insurance, lyme insurance, lyme treatment guidelines