Medscape Editorial Policies

WebMD LLC (“WebMD” or “we”), which operates www.medscape.com (“Medscape”), is committed to providing Medscape users with editorial content that meets the highest journalistic and editorial standards, focusing on fairness, accuracy, independence, transparency, and objectivity. Medscape’s editorial content, including news, features, and reference, is developed independently of the advertising and promotional content available on Medscape, all of which is clearly labeled as such in accordance with the WebMD Advertising Policy. Third-party editorial content licensed for use on Medscape is held to the same editorial standards as Medscape’s original content.

News & Perspectives

We identify topics for Medscape’s news and perspectives content based on current clinical and professional information needs of physicians and healthcare professionals. This content is produced by a team of seasoned, full-time journalists and editors. Contributing clinical experts collaborate with an experienced team of in-house medical editors on Medscape’s expert perspectives and features content. Medscape editors review all content prior to publication to ensure adherence to our editorial standards, including disclosure of any relevant financial relationships of expert contributors. Further, we do not assign journalists to cover topics in respect of which they have disclosed a financial interest.

User comments should be professional in tone, on topic and relevant conflicts of interest must be disclosed. We reserve the right to remove posts at our sole discretion. Please see our Commenting Guide for further information.

Drugs & Diseases

Medscape Drugs & Disease content is created by clinical experts in the relevant fields. A dedicated PharmD staff compiles Medscape’s proprietary drug monographs and drug interactions, based primarily on US drug approvals and applications. New drug monographs are created following approval of such drugs by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are updated periodically. Medscape condition and procedure articles are authored and reviewed by a distributed network of 8000 clinical faculty from leading academic medical centers and hospital systems. Chief editors and authors from this network work directly with Medscape’s editorial team to ensure the currency, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of the content. The condition and procedure articles are sourced from and linked to recent primary-source literature from top-tier journals and medical societies. Affiliations and disclosure statements for chief editors and authors are included with each article, along with the most recent article revision date.

Consult

Medscape Consult is a moderated online community where physicians and medical students share challenging cases, ask questions, and discuss clinical topics. Medscape continuously moderates Consult to ensure anonymization of patient information and compliance with the community guidelines. A team of specialist physicians provides expert guidance for selected community posts in the form of featured answers at the top of comment threads. In addition, academic and society partners provide serialized posts and featured answers within selected subject areas. Consult community members can influence the quality of post feeds by pointing out high-quality posts and comments with an up-vote, and hiding poor ones as part of a quorum of down-voting members.

Our Team

For a list of the Medscape editorial staff, click here.

Medscape Education Editorial Policies

CME and Education

Medscape, LLC (“Medscape Education”) is jointly accredited with commendation by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. Jointly accredited education is designed to be independent, free from commercial bias, and effective in improving the quality and safety of care delivered by the healthcare team. Medscape Education’s activities enable physicians, advanced practice clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals to earn free credit toward maintenance of their licensure and/or certification. Medscape Education maintains strict adherence to the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education set forth by the ACCME, as well as to AMA, AdvaMed, FDA, HHS-OIG, PhRMA, and relevant international guidelines governing independent medical education.

The topics of Medscape Education’s activities are selected based on the needs of healthcare professionals in the relevant specialty areas. Each activity is developed using instructional designs and formats that are most appropriate to the educational needs and objectives, and the diverse learning styles of healthcare professionals. Medscape Education staff, which includes medical directors and experts in educational design and user experience, work with faculty who are leading experts in the topic to create content that improves the knowledge, skills, strategies, and performance of clinicians and the systems within which they work, resulting in positive impacts on patient outcomes, and ultimately on population health.

Medscape Education provides accredited continuing education that is independent, fair-balanced, and free from commercial bias. All individuals in control of the content for an educational activity (eg, faculty, planners, reviewers, and others) are required to disclose any financial interest or other relationship as described in the ACCME Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education. Medscape Education reviews and mitigates relevant financial relationships with its faculty and planners of the educational activities in accordance with its content validity policy, which ensures that all education is fair and balanced, independent, evidence based, and that any clinical content presented supports safe, effective patient care.

Medscape Education is committed to providing timely, comprehensive clinical education to improve the quality of patient care through interactive learning and to support the healthcare team with the educational resources to improve their skills, competence, and performance.