Minnesota looks for statewide "best practices"

The state medical society takes some heat from members for supporting best-practices legislation.

By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. June 28, 2004.

Buried near the end of a 149-page omnibus budget bill for the state of Minnesota, right after a clause requiring insurance companies to provide coverage for scalp hair prostheses, was a short piece of legislation that got some people very worked up.

Entitled "Best Practices and Quality Improvement," the new law calls on the state health commissioner to identify, promote, disseminate and encourage the adoption of best-practice guidelines and measurements. The bill, signed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty May 29, received a controversial endorsement from the Minnesota Medical Assn., which preferred it over a related bill that mandated the use of best-practice guidelines.

"I think physicians have nervousness whenever an outside entity tells them how to practice medicine," said Dave Renner, director of the MMA's Dept. of State and Federal Legislation. "We don't think this does that, but I think that's where the nervousness comes from."

The controversy was fueled by a consumer activist group called the Citizens' Council on Health Care, which denounced both versions of the bill as "cookbook medicine," and delivered to the governor a foot-high stack of petitions signed by people opposing best-practices legislation.

State Commissioner of Health Dianne Mandernach has sought to ease doctors' concerns by saying that they will be "front and center" in the process of developing best practices.