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.
Medscape Education Editorial Policies
CME and Education
Medscape, LLC (“Medscape Education”) is jointly accredited 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 medical education (CME) for healthcare professionals in accordance with the standards established by the applicable accrediting entity.
The topics of Medscape Education’s CME activities are selected based on the needs of healthcare professionals in the relevant specialty areas. Medscape Education’s CME activities are controlled by Medscape Education’s staff and developed independently of commercial interests. If a CME activity is developed using funding from a commercial interest, the financial relationship is disclosed prior to the start of the activity. Medscape Education is not involved in the development or distribution of content relating to the promotion, marketing, or advertising of FDA-regulated products.