New CPG Requirements Will ‘Raise the Bar’ at Federal Clearinghouse
The federal government’s official clearinghouse for practice guidelines will adopt more stringent standards for acceptance in the coming months. The new standards, adopted from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), include requirements for content, authorship, methodology, format, accessibility, and currency.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) will implement the new standards beginning June 1. The changes result from a 2008 directive from the federal government for IOM to identify best practice for developing clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). A full report, titled Clinical Practice Guidelines we can trust is available at the IOM website.