From clinical practice guidelines towards quality assurance

Clinical practice guidelines have been introduced to assist decision making at the bedside of individual patients. Guidelines are also increasingly regarded as being an indispensable part of professional quality systems. Guidelines are important tools to improve knowledge-management, processes and outcomes in healthcare. They aim to assist professional and patient decisions especially in those areas of healthcare where considerable variation or potential for improvement exist and they can provide a foundation for assessing and evaluating the quality and effectiveness of healthcare in terms of measuring processes and outcomes. Quality indicators or performance measures based on guideline recommendations are necessary to evaluate the usefulness of guidelines and the appropriateness of healthcare delivery. Guideline recommendations are the tools for healthcare professionals to develop strategies for quality improvement in case deviations from desired processes or outcomes are identified by the measurement of quality indicators.