Both the overuse and underuse of clinical preventive services are a major pubic health challenge. To help identify the sweet spot between these two extremes, researchers used population-based national data to help design communication strategies to improve evidence-based guidelines for clinical preventive services.
As part of the study, published in The Milbank Quarterly, the researchers conducted an Internet-based survey in late 2013 of more than 2,500 adult healthcare consumers on the knowledge and attitudes surrounding clinical preventive services.
The survey revealed:
1. More than one-third (36.4 percent) of adults knew the Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to cover proven preventive services without cost sharing, but only 7.7 percent had ever heard of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, or USPSTF.
2. Approximately 32.6 percent reported trusting that a government task force would make fair guidelines for preventive services, and 38.2 percent think the government uses guidelines to ration healthcare.
3. While the majority of the respondents supported using research/scientific evidence and expert medical opinion to create guidelines for clinical preventive services, less than 10 percent of the respondents said a physician-made and guideline-based recommendation against a cancer-screening test was sufficient without further dialogue or research.
Ultimately, the researchers concluded that the "demonstrated low levels of knowledge and mistrust regarding guidelines, coupled with a strong preference for shared decision-making" mean "better consumer education and decision supports for evidence-based guidelines for clinical preventive services are greatly needed."
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