Development of nutrition standards and therapeutic diet specifications for public hospitals in New South Wales

In New South Wales (NSW), a new suite of nutrition standards for menus and specifications for therapeutic diets to be used in hospitals has been developed. These standards were required to facilitate centralised menu planning and food production, with the move to management of most hospital food services by HealthShare NSW, a state-wide business unit of NSW Health. The standards also aim to improve communication between health professionals, particularly with the increasing use of computerised meal-ordering systems. Nutrition standards have been developed for adult, paediatric and mental health inpatients, and specifications for 147 different adult and paediatric therapeutic diets. There is still significant variation in the nutrition standards for nutrition and therapeutic diets in hospitals across the Australian states, and a move to a more nationally harmonised approach would be welcome. Further research is required to examine the impact of these standards on operating efficiency and patient care outcomes

The RAND/PPMD Patient-Centeredness Method: a novel online approach to engaging patients and their representatives in guideline development

Although clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) provide recommendations for how best to treat a typical patient with a given condition, patients and their representatives are not always engaged in CPG development. Despite the agreement that patient participation may improve the quality and utility of CPGs, there is no systematic, scalable method for engaging patients and their representatives, as well as no consensus on what exactly patients and their representatives should be asked to do during CPG development. To address these gaps, an interdisciplinary team of researchers, patient representatives, and clinicians developed the RAND/PPMD Patient-Centeredness Method (RPM) - a novel online approach to engaging patients and their representatives in CPG development. The RPM is an iterative approach that allows patients and their representatives to provide input by (1) generating ideas; (2) rating draft recommendations on two criteria (importance and acceptability); (3) explaining and discussing their ratings with other participants using online, asynchronous, anonymous, moderated discussion boards, and (4) revising their responses if needed. The RPM was designed to be consistent with the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method used by clinicians and researchers to develop CPG, while helping patients and their representative rate outcome importance and recommendation acceptability - two key components of the GRADE Evidence to Decision (EtD) framework. With slight modifications, the RPM has the potential to explore consensus among key stakeholders on other dimensions of the EtD, including feasibility, equity, and resource use

Multi-level strategies to improve equitable timely person-centred osteoarthritis care for diverse women: qualitative interviews with women and healthcare professionals

Abstract Background Women are more likely to develop osteoarthritis (OA), and have greater OA pain and disability compared with men, but are less likely to receive guideline-recommended management, particularly racialized women. OA care of diverse women, and strategies to improve the quality of their OA care is understudied. The purpose of this study was to explore strategies to overcome barriers of access to OA care for diverse women. Methods We conducted qualitative interviews with key informants and used content analysis to identify themes regarding what constitutes person-centred OA care, barriers of OA care, and strategies to support equitable timely access to person-centred OA care. Results We interviewed 27 women who varied by ethno-cultural group (e.g. African or Caribbean Black, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Pakistani, Caucasian), age, region of Canada, level of education, location of OA and years with OA; and 31 healthcare professionals who varied by profession (e.g. family physician, nurse practitioner, community pharmacist, physio- and occupational therapists, chiropractors, healthcare executives, policy-makers), career stage, region of Canada and type of organization. Participants within and across groups largely agreed on approaches for person-centred OA care across six domains: foster a healing relationship, exchange information, address emotions, manage uncertainty, share decisions and enable self-management. Participants identified 22 barriers of access and 18 strategies to overcome barriers at the patient- (e.g. educational sessions and materials that accommodate cultural norms offered in different languages and formats for persons affected by OA), healthcare professional- (e.g. medical and continuing education on OA and on providing OA care tailored to intersectional factors) and system- (e.g. public health campaigns to raise awareness of OA, and how to prevent and manage it; self-referral to and public funding for therapy, greater number and ethno-cultural diversity of healthcare professionals, healthcare policies that address the needs of diverse women, dedicated inter-professional OA clinics, and a national strategy to coordinate OA care) levels. Conclusions This research contributes to a gap in knowledge of how to optimize OA care for disadvantaged groups including diverse women. Ongoing efforts are needed to examine how best to implement these strategies, which will require multi-sector collaboration and must engage diverse women

Protocol for the development of guidance for stakeholder engagement in health and healthcare guideline development and implementation

Stakeholder engagement has become widely accepted as a necessary component of guideline development and implementation. While frameworks for developing guidelines express the need for those potentially affected by guideline recommendations to be involved in their development, there is a lack of consensus on how this should be done in practice. Further, there is a lack of guidance on how to equitably and meaningfully engage multiple stakeholders. We aim to develop guidance for the meaningful and equitable engagement of multiple stakeholders in guideline development and implementation. METHODS: This will be a multi-stage project. The first stage is to conduct a series of four systematic reviews. These will (1) describe existing guidance and methods for stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation, (2) characterize barriers and facilitators to stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation, (3) explore the impact of stakeholder engagement on guideline development and implementation, and (4) identify issues related to conflicts of interest when engaging multiple stakeholders in guideline development and implementation. DISCUSSION: We will collaborate with our multiple and diverse stakeholders to develop guidance for multi-stakeholder engagement in guideline development and implementation. We will use the results of the systematic reviews to develop a candidate list of draft guidance recommendations and will seek broad feedback on the draft guidance via an online survey of guideline developers and external stakeholders. An invited group of representatives from all stakeholder groups will discuss the results of the survey at a consensus meeting which will inform the development of the final guidance papers. Our overall goal is to improve the development of guidelines through meaningful and equitable multi-stakeholder engagement, and subsequently to improve health outcomes and reduce inequities in health

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ABSTRACT. Objective. To develop a list of 5 tests or treatments used in rheumatology that have evidence indicating that they may be unnecessary and thus should be reevaluated by rheumatology healthcare providers and patients. Methods. Using the Delphi method, a committee of 16 rheumatologists from across Canada and an allied health professional generated a list of tests, procedures, or treatments in rheumatology that may be unnecessary, nonspecific, or insensitive. Items with high content agreement and perceived relevance advanced to a survey of Canadian Rheumatology Association (CRA) members. CRA members ranked these top items based on content agreement, effect, and item ranking. A methodology subcommittee discussed the items in light of their relevance to rheumatology, potential effect on patients, and the member survey results. Five candidate items selected were then subjected to a literature review. A group of patient collaborators with rheumatic diseases also reviewed these items. Results. Sixty-four unique items were proposed and after 3 Delphi rounds, this list was narrowed down to 13 items. In the member-wide survey, 172 rheumatologists responded (36% of those contacted). The respondent characteristics were similar to the membership at large in terms of sex and geographical distribution. Five topics (antinuclear antibodies testing, HLA-B27 testing, bone density testing, bone scans, and bisphosphonate use) with high ratings on agreement and effect were chosen for literature review. Conclusion. The list of 5 items has identified starting points to promote discussion about practices that should be questioned to assist rheumatology healthcare providers in delivering high-quality care

GRADE guidelines : 19. assessing the certainty of evidence in the importance of outcomes or values and preferences-risk of bias and indirectness

Q1Q194-104Objectives The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) working group defines patient values and preferences as the relative importance patients place on the main health outcomes. We provide GRADE guidance for assessing the risk of bias and indirectness domains for certainty of evidence about the relative importance of outcomes. Study Design and Setting We applied the GRADE domains to rate the certainty of evidence in the importance of outcomes to several systematic reviews, iteratively reviewed draft guidance and consulted GRADE members and other stakeholders for feedback. Results This is the first of two articles. A body of evidence addressing the importance of outcomes starts at “high certainty”; concerns with risk of bias, indirectness, inconsistency, imprecision, and publication bias lead to downgrading to moderate, low, or very low certainty. We propose subdomains of risk of bias as selection of the study population, missing data, the type of measurement instrument, and confounding; we have developed items for each subdomain. The population, intervention, comparison, and outcome elements associated with the evidence determine the degree of indirectness. Conclusion This article provides guidance and examples for rating the risk of bias and indirectness for a body of evidence summarizing the importance of outcomes

A Novel Approach for Integrating Best Evidence and Patient Preferences into Treatment Recommendations for Rheumatoid Arthritis

To develop a treatment recommendation we must first critically appraise and summarize the evidence, then decide how to weigh the necessary trade-offs between the benefits and harms. GRADE, which is becoming the standard for developing treatment recommendations, recommends that patients’ preferences should be explicitly considered when making these trade-offs, but methods for doing this quantitatively are lacking. The aim of this thesis was to develop a quantitative approach for combining comparative effectiveness research and patients’ preferences, and apply it to inform treatment recommendations for early rheumatoid arthritis. In the first study, we performed a Bayesian network meta-analysis of 150 randomized controlled trials to compare the benefits and harms of treatment options for early rheumatoid arthritis. In the second paper we used a discrete-choice experiment to measure the relative importance of the major outcomes from the network meta-analysis as well as other issues relevant to the decision (dosing, rare risks) in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis. For the final paper we used a Bayesian framework to combine the data from the network-meta-analysis and the discrete-choice experiment to determine the preferred treatments. Importantly, we modeled the uncertainty in the evidence and patients’ preferences, as well as individual variability in patients' preferences, which are three key considerations in the GRADE approach. Overall, we predicted that most patients in our population (78%) would prefer triple therapy (the combination of methotrexate, sulphasalazine and hydroxychloroquine) to methotrexate alone as initial therapy, suggesting a relatively strong recommendation could be made. In patients who have had an inadequate response to methotrexate, the preferred treatment was more split between triple therapy (62%) and methotrexate + anti-TNF (biologic) therapy. The patients who we predicted would prefer other treatments, had important differences in preferences that could be highlighted in a preference-sensitive treatment algorithm. The thesis therefore presents a novel method for developing evidence-based, preference-sensitive treatment recommendations. Applied to early rheumatoid arthritis, our findings have important policy implications, suggesting that patients would prefer triple therapy to other treatments, including costly biologic therapy.Ph.D

Patient Preferences for Disease-modifying Antirheumatic Drug Treatment in Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Systematic Review

OBJECTIVE: To summarize patients’ preferences for disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) therapy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS: We conducted a systematic review to identify English-language studies in adult RA patients that measured patients’ preferences for DMARDs or health states and treatment outcomes relevant to DMARD decisions. Study quality was assessed using a published quality assessment tool. Data on the importance of treatment attributes and associations with patient characteristics was summarized across studies. RESULTS: From 7951 abstracts, we included 36 studies from a variety of countries. Most studies were in patients with established RA and were rated as medium (n=19) or high quality (n=12). The methods to elicit preferences varied, with the most common being discrete choice experiment (DCE) (n=13). Despite the heterogeneity of attributes in DCE studies, treatment benefits (disease improvement) were usually more important than both non-serious (6 of 8 studies), and serious adverse events (5 of 8), and route of administration (7 of 9). Amongst the non-DCE studies, some found patients placed high importance on treatment benefits, while others (in patients with established RA) found patients were quite risk averse. Subcutaneous therapy was often, but not always preferred over intravenous therapy. Patient preferences were variable and commonly associated with sociodemographics. CONCLUSION: Overall, the results showed that many patients place a high value on treatment benefits over other treatment attributes including serious or minor side effects, cost or route of administration. The variability in patient preferences highlights the need to individualize treatment choices in RA.Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR

Association between Air Pollution and the Development of Rheumatic Disease: A Systematic Review

Objective. Environmental risk factors, such as air pollution, have been studied in relation to the risk of development of rheumatic diseases. We performed a systematic literature review to summarize the existing knowledge. Methods. MEDLINE (1946 to September 2016) and EMBASE (1980 to 2016, week 37) databases were searched using MeSH terms and keywords to identify cohort, case-control, and case cross-over studies reporting risk estimates for the development of select rheumatic diseases in relation to exposure of measured air pollutants (n=8). We extracted information on the population sample and study period, method of case and exposure determination, and the estimate of association. Results. There was no consistent evidence of an increased risk for the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with exposure to NO2, SO2, PM2.5, or PM10. Case-control studies in systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs) indicated higher odds of diagnosis with increasing PM2.5 exposure, as well as an increased relative risk for juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) in American children <5.5 years of age. There was no association with SARDs and NO2 exposure. Conclusion. There is evidence for a possible association between air pollutant exposures and the development of SARDs and JIA, but relationships with other rheumatic diseases are less clear