Diagnostic and treatment guidelines aren’t sexy, but they play a vital role in the practice of medicine. Physician societies, government agencies, and others issue detailed recommendations for everything from who should receive cardiac stents to which antibiotics patients should get to avoid infections after knee surgery.
These documents are essential for the provision of evidence-based care, as opposed to seat-of-the-pants treatment that might be expedient or lucrative for doctors but less than ideal for patients.
Until now, the most rigorous of those guidelines have been available for doctors to peruse in a single location: the government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s National Guidelines Clearinghouse (NGC). NGC also takes the time to summarize the more than 4,000 guidelines it maintains, an indispensible service for the physicians who come to the site seeking information.
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