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This month’s edition of Healthcare Review – OnlineTM focusses on guidelines in health care and the broader clinical effectiveness movement.
Problems in health care funding and delivery continue to provide the impetus for the clinical effectiveness movement in New Zealand and internationally. The combined effect of new technology, an ageing population, and rising community expectations means that demand on health care resources continues to grow rapidly. Strategies to maximise health gains from available resources are essential, and guidelines are proving to be an important - and successful - strategy.
Guidelines are decision tools that assist both providers and patients in decision-making. Their overriding purpose is to improve quality of care for patients by promoting "best practices" that improve the outcomes of treatment.
Guidelines are increasingly part of current practice and their use is expected to become more common over the next decade.
In this edition, we present a summary of material presented at the two-day 2nd National Guidelines Conference in Wellington, hosted by the New Zealand Guidelines Group (NZGG), on 27 – 28 May 1999.
In the two years since the First National Guidelines Conference, best-practice guidelines have been established in an important role in the New Zealand health and disability sector. Guidelines are now used routinely in many areas of the health sector, including primary, secondary and tertiary care, community care and disability support.
Over the past three years of the National Health Committee’s Guidelines Programme, NZGG has convened training programmes for over 150 health and disability professionals. Modified programmes have been run in conjunction with Maori working in the health sector and consumer representatives. NZGG fellows have led and participated in the development of a number of local and national best-practice guidelines. There is now sufficient experience locally in guidelines development to provide clear direction about what does - and doesn’t - work in the New Zealand setting.
The overall aim of the conference was to provide an opportunity to reflect on and learn from the impressive progress that has been made in guideline development and implementation, and to discuss opportunities for future directions for guidelines and effective practice in general.
In addition, the conference provided a forum to link the NZGG’s guidelines work with other effective practice activities such as the Cochrane Collaboration, NZHTA, NZ Centre for Evidence Based Nursing and Midwifery, and the Preferred Medicines Centre (PreMeC).
The National Health Committee was the major sponsor for the conference. However, a number of other organisations contributed to and participated in the conference including ACC, the Centre for Evidence Based Nursing and Midwifery, Enigma Publishing Ltd, the Health Funding Authority, Ministry of Health, NZ Health Technology Assessment, PHARMAC, the Preferred Medicines Centre (PreMeC), and the RNZCGP.
