Field Review

Overview of Field Review process

All ACR^® members are invited to review and comment on the documents that will be presented at the subsequent annual meeting. Draft documents are available for comments between August and November via the online commenting tool (Login Required).

Your input as an individual ACR member has equal weight whether you are a Board member or a member in training. Only comments that provide specific language recommendations can be used for document revisions. General feedback about an issue relevant to the document that does not suggest language cannot be acted upon without assuming what was intended.

Collaborative society representatives must follow the society’s process for reviewing and commenting on the documents during field review. ACR process requires the collaborating society have knowledge of, and final decision on all comments submitted on their behalf. Please coordinate with the appropriate society staff to submit comments for that society. If you are both a society representative and an ACR member, you may also participate individually as described in the prior paragraph.

The draft parameters and standards are grouped into one of four (or five, if needed) field review cycles; each cycle lasts three weeks.

At the conclusion of each cycle, the comments are collated by staff to be reviewed by one of the ACR Council Steering Committee member-led committees (aka Council Reconciliation Committees). Noncontroversial editorial changes and errors identified through the commenting process are incorporated into the document prior to review by the committee, leaving only substantive comments, which may be resolved through email. When appropriate, a conference call is held by a Council Reconciliation Committee to allow commenters and writing committee members the opportunity to discuss suggested language and determine possible revisions.

The applicable collaborating societies receive the “final draft” document which will be presented at the ACR Annual Meeting. Collaborating societies are asked to acknowledge the final draft document receipt and are provided an opportunity to state any concerns prior to the annual meeting, to expedite communication prior to approval considerations. No changes can be made to the final draft documents until they are presented for approval to ACR Council at the ACR Annual Meeting.

Approvals are obtained from each of the collaborating societies after ACR BOC, CSC, and Council adoption. For more information on the approval process, see “Review and Approval Process” section of the Practice Parameters and Technical Standards Development Handbook.

Please note: Field review is the last activity of the Practice Parameters and Technical Standards review process. All edits proposed during field review will be considered for incorporation into the document. No changes to the documents can be considered once the field review has been completed. Changes may be introduced during the approval phase of the document, but the vetting discussion may be brief and may not get the full consideration of the committee. It is strongly encouraged for members to review documents during field review. Factual errors, grammar and misspellings may be submitted directly to ACR staff at any time and should not be submitted during approval process