Association Between Sponsorship and Findings of Medical Home Evaluations

Published evaluations of medical home interventions have reported mixed results. Some evaluators have been employed or funded by the sponsors of the interventions that they evaluated, while others were independent. Relationships between evaluators and sponsors of medical home interventions might influence evaluation designs and decisions about whether to publish evaluation findings. If such influence exists, evaluators employed or funded by intervention sponsors might be more likely to publish favorable findings (or suppress unfavorable findings), compared with evaluators who are independent — thus potentially biasing the medical home literature toward favorable effect estimates.