Use of evidence from systematic reviews to inform commissioning decisions: a case study

Systematic reviews provide high-level evidence but there are barriers to their use by policy makers. This paper reports the preparation and evaluation of an evidence briefing, using systematic reviews and other existing sources of synthesised evidence, to support a possible reorganisation of services for young people with eating disorders in an English primary care trust. There was no evidence of differences in outcomes between community, outpatient and specialist inpatient treatment. The provision of specialist outpatient services appeared most cost-effective. The commissioning group agreed to move towards providing services on an outpatient basis. This work suggests that evidence briefings based on systematic reviews warrant further methodological development and evaluation.