NSQIP Quality Benchmarking and Evaluation of Potential Bias Associated with Higher- or Lower-Risk Operation Case Mix.

Background: To ensure validity and acceptance of NSQIP risk-adjusted benchmarking, it is important that adjustments adequately control for hospitals that vary in their proportions of lower- or higher-risk operations (combined risk for procedure and patient). This issue was addressed in separate empirical and simulation studies.

Study Design: For the empirical study, potential miscalibration bias favoring hospitals that do lower-risk operations or disfavoring hospitals that do higher-risk operations was evaluated for 14 modeled outcomes using NSQIP data.

Recommended pre-test counseling points for noninvasive prenatal testing using cell-free DNA: a 2015 perspective.

Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) using cell-free DNA is being offered to an increasing number of women. Comprehensive pre-test counseling is complicated by emerging information about the benefits and limitations of testing, as well as the potential to detect incidental findings. Genetic counselors are trained to facilitate informed decision-making; however, not all centers have access to these professionals.

NIPT: current utilization and implications for the future of prenatal genetic counseling.

Background: Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for select fetal trisomies became clinically available in 2011. When it was introduced, there were no recommendations from the major governing bodies in prenatal genetics regarding its incorporation.

Purpose: We sought to determine how genetic counselors have incorporated NIPT into clinical practice and how NIPT has changed the informed consent process.