Healthwise to "retire the GET/CBT topics" from medical content

Makes NICE' s failure to remove these treatments more damning.

 

Well done indeed.

Could you point me to the information Healthwise provide on ME/CFS and CBT/GET please? I found their website rather confusing and couldn't see a search facility. Many thanks!

 

Thank you Webdog!
Great job.

 

Kudos, @Webdog! Excellent piece of advocacy.

 

Yes really excellent and all credit to Healthwise.

 

Yes - I've mentioned that in my email, which I hope I have finally succeeded in submitting!

 

Fabulous news....well done & thank you @Webdog

You are awesome!!

 

Brilliant @Webdog.

 

That's a fantastic achievement @Webdog! Thank you so much for al! your hard work and persistence. Well done!

 

@Webdog
Thank you so much for pursuing this until you reached a satisfactory conclusion.
Very well done.

 

In prior contact with Healthwise, they had cited NICE (and Cochrane and ancecdotal reports) as evidence to continue recommending GET/CBT.

I'm very glad Healthwise didn't wait around for NICE to change course.

 

Here are the current GET/CBT Healthwise modules on the Kaiser Permanente website:

GET - https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.or...ncyclopedia&ctype=kb&locale=en-us&hwid=zx1021
CBT - https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.or...ncyclopedia&ctype=kb&locale=en-us&hwid=zx1040

Also, I will attach as PDFs the previous iteration of the GET/CBT modules. They were much worse (lots of old CDC toolkit bullshit + PACE) before the update last year.

Edit: There was an intermediate update in March of 2017 between the current Nov 2017 content and the 2016 attached PDFs. I don't have copies of that, I'm afraid. The main March 2017 change was deemphasizing GET/CBT.

 

I sent a quick thank you note to the Bateman Horne Center, as Healthwise mentions their recent "Clinicians' Summit" was a primary reason for dropping GET/CBT.

 

Well done @Webdog it just goes to show if you don’t ask you don’t get and the power of persistence. I wonder how many more we can influence.

I’m thinking if nice won’t budge yet we could maybe work on the following in the UK:

https://www.webmd.boots.com/a-to-z-guides/ss/slideshow-cfs-me-overview

Really though it’s this one that we should tackle although the chance of this is slim

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-cfs/treatment/

Has anybody tried?

 

Yes and no.

Yes, the Healthwise update should trickle down and update the content for every healthcare organization that subscribes to Healthwise.

No in that doctors are not obligated to follow Healthwise recommendations. So, in theory, Kaiser Permanente could have the updated Healthwise content on their website while at the same time their doctors still recommend GET+CBT for ME/CFS.

Patients, more than doctors, read Healthwise content.

Still, it could be awkward for a healthcare organization to prescribe treatments at odds with the recommendations on their own website.

I'm not entirely sure how this will play out. Perhaps those healthcare industry experience have a better idea on this.

 

One of the nice things is that so many places subscribe to Healthwise. Including WebMD.

So when Healthwise content updates, so should WebMD (eventually). And perhaps this will then propagate WebMD content in the UK? (speculating here).



Edit: It does appear WebMD is still using an old version of Healthwise content (copyright says 2015). So I have no idea when WebMD will update their severely outdated Healthwise content.

 

Thanks for the heads up @arewenearlythereyet

I just sent a message to WebMD asking them to please immediately update their Healthwise content for "Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" and "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome".

These Healthwise sections were last updated in 2011 and 2015 respectively.

Negligence or intentionally holding onto PACE? I have no idea.

Edit: I send out ME/CFS email comments to websites all the time, using temporary email addresses that I retire periodically. It must be my ME/CFS perfectionistic obsessive compulsive vexatious personality.

 

Great. This is quite exciting ...if webmd change in the US and not in the UK I’m sure we could start a campaign and approach boots to update their company information too (which may not be visible to the public). Boots is the biggest high street pharmacy chain here. They do have stores under a different brand name in the US too I believe but I’ll need to check that. And if they change then maybe the rest will follow...we can then approach the supermarkets that host the pharmacies on their estate and really get the ball rolling?

 

Healthwise said if I had any more questions, just ask. So I asked Healthwise if they would reach out to WebMD about updating their quite old ME/CFS content.