Definition
Evidence an institution holds that no rule obliges it to act on. The list of review triggers on a policy record is written by the institution, and it can be narrower than what the institution knows: the clinical service has adopted the new guideline, the specialist wrote the paper, the committee it staffs published the revision — and the coverage rule runs as if none of it arrived. The knowledge exists. The wiring between it and the rule does not.
It differs from non-conversion in what is being refused. That term covers capability converting itself into authority without a decision. This one covers evidence converting into nothing at all: no status change, no reconsideration, no review — because the class of evidence was never declared, and declaring it is the institution's own choice.
It is the mechanism behind the outdated rulebook: guidance that stays years behind the science not because the science was unknown but because the office that knows is not the office the rule reads. STD-08 §2.7 closes it by making the holding of evidence itself a fired trigger — the clock runs from the day the evidence was held, not the day someone upstairs was told.
Hypothetical example
- A health plan's medical policy cites a 2021 criterion for an imaging study while the specialty society replaced it in 2024; three of the plan's own network physicians are authors of the replacement.