Nat'l Guideline Clearinghouse Features Chiropractic Guidelines

Website Offers Guideline Comparisons and Recommendations

By Editorial Staff

The National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) is "a comprehensive database of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and related documents produced by the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR)." The government website features over 500 health care guidelines, including a utility for comparing the attributes of two or more guidelines in a side-by-side comparison.

NGC's mission, according to the website, is to "provide physicians, nurses, and other health professionals, health care providers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, purchasers and others an accessible mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on clinical practice guidelines and to further their dissemination, implementation and use." To fulfill that mission, the website features links to the major recommendations of each of the guidelines.

The NGC has now added to their website the Guidelines for Chiropractic Quality Assurance and Practice Parameters (popularly called the Mercy Guidelines).

"Aspen Publishers was approached by the National Guideline Clearinghouse for permission to list the recommendations from the Guidelines for Chiropractic Quality Assurance Conference on their website," explained Amy Martin,MHS, acquisitions' editor for allied health. "They (NGC) have apparently received many inquiries wondering why they weren't listed. The (Mercy) Guidelines continue to be one of our most popular publications and it only makes sense that they should be accessible through the NGC, as it is geared toward being a comprehensive public resource for consumers and health care professionals."

Readers may access the chiropractic guidelines on the NGC website at: http://www.guideline.gov/index.asp . Once on the NGC home page, type "chiropractic" in the search field and hit the "Submit" button. You'll be taken to a page that displays the names of five guidelines that contain information on chiropractic. It is on this page that the reader can select the relevant guidelines for comparison.

To compare the Mercy Guidelines and the AHCPR's back pain guidelines, you simply select the box for Guidelines for Chiropractic Quality Assurance and Practice Parameters and the box for Acute Low Back Problems in Adults. You then click the "Add to Guideline Collection" button to proceed. The next page lists the "Guidelines in your Collection." On this page you click on the "Compare Selected Guidelines" button. You can now compare the two guidelines side-by-side.
The most striking difference between these two guidelines is the funding sources:

AHCPR Guidelines:

United States Government

Guidelines for Chiropractic Quality Assurance and Practice Parameters:

Funding for the Consensus Conference:

Congress of Chiropractic State Associations

American Chiropractic Association

International Chiropractic Association

Canadian Chiropractic Association

Federation of Chiropractic Licensing Boards

Association of Chiropractic Colleges

Southeastern Chiropractic Federation

Texas Chiropractic Association

Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research

National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association

Activator Methods

The Chiropractic Report

Foot Levelers, Inc.

Leander Technologies

Motion Palpation Institute

National Chiropractic Mutual Insurance Company

Nutri-West

OUM Group Inc.

Superfeet

World Wide Chiropractic Placement Service

Funding for the distribution of the guidelines to all members of the chiropractic profession:

National Chiropractic Mutual Insurance Company

Foot Levelers, Inc.

OUM Group

California Chiropractic Association

Leander Health Technologies

Activator Methods

The Practice Resource Group

Motion Palpation Institute

Parker Chiropractic Resource Foundation

Synergy

Visual Odyssey

Another important difference is the "Target Population":

AHCPR Guidelines:

Adults with acute low back problems defined as activity limitations due to symptoms in the low back and/or back-related leg symptoms of less than 3 months' duration.

Guidelines for Chiropractic Quality Assurance and Practice Parameters:

Patients who are candidates for chiropractic care.

This is just one example of the comparisons possible. You can next choose to "View Major Recommendations" or go back to the "Search Results" page and generate another comparison of the chiropractic guidelines against less rigorous or less specific guidelines.