MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force sets guidelines for primary care clinicians. Earlier this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled a meeting the group had on the books. Now medical groups are afraid he may overhaul it altogether. NPR's Pien Huang has more.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: Dr. Bobby Mukkamala is president of the American Medical Association.
BOBBY MUKKAMALA: It's very concerning, and it's not the first time we've been concerned.
HUANG: He says, last month, Kennedy dismissed the members of a different advisory committee, one on vaccines for the CDC, and replaced them with his own picks, who largely lacked the expertise in vaccines and immunology the members typically have. Mukkamala worries the same could happen here with the independent group of experts that focus on primary care.
MUKKAMALA: When you have something good and you don't know if it's going to be replaced with something good, it's just a risk that nobody should take.
HUANG: The plan was first reported in The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is a group of independent experts that serve four years at a time. They reviewed data and made recommendations for preventing all sorts of diseases since 1984. Most recently, what they recommend tends to be covered by health insurance. Dr. Alex Krist is a family physician at Virginia Commonwealth University and a former chair of the task force.
ALEX KRIST: Probably every patient I see, I'm using about five to 20 of their guidelines to make sure that I'm keeping that person healthy.
HUANG: That includes on topics like...
KRIST: Mammograms for screening for breast cancer, colonoscopies for colon cancer, screening and managing high blood pressure.
HUANG: Diabetes, obesity, preventing falls - the list goes on. The American Medical Association, along with over a hundred other health organizations, have sent a letter to members of Congress urging them to protect and preserve the integrity of this group. Otherwise, they say, primary care doctors could lose trust in the guidelines. And the results could be devastating for patients, hospital systems and payers. HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pien Huang, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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