Setting Priorities for Clinical Practice Guidelines

This book examines methods for selecting topics and setting priorities for clinical practice guideline development and implementation. Clinical practice guidelines are "systematically defined statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances." In its assessment of processes for setting priorities, the committee considers the principles of consistency with the organization's mission, implementation feasibility, efficiency, utility of the results to the organization, and openness and defensibility—a principle that is especially important to public agencies. The volume also examines the implications of health care restructuring for priority setting and topic selection, including the link between national and local approaches to guidelines development.

Table of Contents

• Front Matter
• Summary
• Introduction
• Criteria for Topic Selection
• Procedures for Priority Setting
• Future Directions for Priority Setting
• References
• Appendix A: Setting Priorities for Health Technology Assessment: A Model Process Executive Summary
• Appendix B: Workshop on Setting Priorities for Practice Guidelines
• Appendix C: Methods for Setting Priorities for Guidelines Development: Medical Malpractice
• Appendix D: National Guidelines and Local Action: Priority-Setting for the Development of Research-Based Protocols at Intermountain Health Care
• Appendix E: The Development of Clinical Guidelines for Primary Care Practice: A Systems Approach
• Appendix F: Examples of Questionnaires for Use in Priority Setting
• Appendix G: Committee Biographies
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