There are many other agencies and organizations that make preventive services recommendations.

They can be grouped into the following categories:

• Specialty-centered
• Disease-centered
• Payer-centered
• Prevention-centered

Specialty-centered

These are organizations or recommending bodies that usually represent a medical specialty or subspecialty. When reviewing preventive service recommendations from these societies, consider whether members of the organization may gain from providing a particular preventive service.

Examples of specialty-centered evidence based guidelines are found in:

• American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG)
• American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP)
• American College of Physicians (ACP)
• American Academy of Pediatrics
• American Urological Association
• American College of Gastroenterology

Disease-centered

These are organizations that usually represent a disease advocacy group. When reviewing preventive service recommendations from these societies, consider whether screening recommendations may be advocated as a means to increase awareness about a disease regardless of costs or risks.

Examples of disease-centered evidence-based guidelines are found in:

• American Diabetes Association
• American Cancer Society
• National Osteoporosis Foundation
• National Lung Blood Heart Institute

Payer-centered

These are organizations that usually represent a payer group. When reviewing preventive service recommendations from these organizations, consider whether screening recommendations are based on cost-savings rather than risk-benefits to patients. Examples of these include preventive services recommendations made by HMO companies or Medicare.

Prevention-centered

These organizations conduct rigorous assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services at a population level and also consider costs. When reviewing preventive service recommendations from these societies recall that some people may feel these organizations don’t take individual patient’s concerns into account or that they weigh cost-effectiveness too highly. These include theUSPSTF and the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care. Conversely, many primary care practitioners feel their recommendations are robust. Despite inherent biases and criticisms of payer-, disease-, specialty- and prevention-centered recommendations, more and more of these types of recommendations have been falling in line with the USPSTF.