clinical guidelines

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practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances". Their purpose is "to make explicit recommendations with a definite intent to influence what clinicians do". Additionally, guidelines have an important role in standardization care and health policy formation such as health promotion, screening etc.
Cyprus due to the recent financial meltdown has been aiming to reduce the cost and maintain or even improve the quality of care therefore an array of tools have been used to achieve this. Inter alia, the development, implementation and monitoring of clinical guidelines, implementation of clinical governance and clinical audit, implementation of Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), restructuring of the public hospitals, and reforming of the Healthcare system introducing a universal coverage and with the concept of a gatekeeper general/family practitioner being the cornerstone of the reform. Interestingly, primary care will be delivered through 3 different specialties namely General Practitioners, Paediatricians and Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Clinical guidelines and chronic disease management programs will be an integral part of the reformed Cyprus primary care
We will describe the policy, the process and methods of preparing and implementing clinical guidelines in Cyprus Primary Care.
Methods
Development of a local guideline by a local stakeholder group provides ‘sense of ownership’ – a factor thought to be associated with increased likelihood that the guideline will actually be adopted. Producing a clinically valid and utilizable guideline is a labour and resource intensive process. It is also time consuming.
The adoption of an existing guideline has advantages namely it removes...

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...tronic educational platform.
8. Monitoring. Effective clinical audit and provision of constructive/balanced feedback to providers is crucial. A comprehensive clinical audit policy for guidelines is in the process of being finalized. We plan to publish online all the results from the selected guidelines quality indicators.
Conclusions
Cyprus healthcare system is under enormous pressure of cost savings due to the financial crisis. The universal introduction of clinical guidelines in all levels of care and particularly in primary care can be an important evidence-based tool to promote ´´efficiency´´ savings hence without diminishing the quality of care. The successful implementation of guidelines in a previously guideline-naive environment will heavily depend on the high quality adaptation process of existing guidelines and the appropriate change management policy

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