FORT WASHINGTON, Pa., June 4, 2008 — The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), an alliance of 21 of the world’s leading cancer centers, will expand its current disclosure process and make public all potential conflicts of interest of all individual expert panel members by the end of 2008. This information will begin to appear online at www.nccn.org in July.
The NCCN began to expand its disclosure procedures for its NCCN Drugs and Biologics Compendium™ and its NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology™ in January 2008 with development of a new Identification and Disclosure of Relationships with External Entities Form and a new Policy on Disclosure of Relationships with External Entities. These documents were filed in February 2008 as part of NCCN’s request to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for recognition of the NCCN Drugs and Biologics Compendium™.
“Historically, the NCCN has disclosed the names of companies with whom there are relationships,” said Dr. William McGivney, CEO of the NCCN. “We now will apply that to individuals so that the public may better use the scientific, evaluative information that we provide.”
The new policy continues NCCN’s commitment to public transparency. The Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee has already recognized the NCCN Drugs and Biologics Compendium™ as the leader with respect to the public transparency of the process for evaluating therapies and for the identification, notification and management of potential conflicts of interests among the six drug compendia companies.
More than 900 top medical specialists, including many of our nation’s leading oncologists and cancer biomedical researchers, contribute their expertise on a volunteer basis to the development of the evidence-based NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology™,” McGivney said. “The task of providing accurate disclosure of their potential conflicts is a large and critical task.”
NCCN will continue to carefully evaluate its conflicts of interest policies to meet fair and reasonable standards of transparency. NCCN’s goal is to contribute to more fully informed and improved decision making on behalf of patients we serve.