U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Announces Mobile-friendly Websites for National Guideline and National Quality Measures Clearinghouses

PLYMOUTH MEETING, Pa., Sept. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Clinical practice guidelines and quality measures are now literally in the hands of healthcare professionals.

The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) announces that the National Guideline Clearinghouse™ (NGC™) and National Quality Measures Clearinghouse™ (NQMC™) websites are now optimized for use on mobile devices. These websites are known as the No. 1 places to go to search for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and quality measures, respectively.  

ECRI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to researching the best approaches to patient care, developed, maintains, and enhances the clearinghouses under contract to AHRQ.  

"We expect this latest enhancement to transform the search experience for busy professionals who are more likely to be on their phones or tablets than on a computer. NGC and NQMC now deliver the on-the-go access that clinicians and other healthcare professionals prefer," says Vivian Coates, a vice president at ECRI Institute, and project director for the ECRI Institute contract to create and maintain the AHRQ clearinghouses.

The updated NGC website lets users browse by clinical specialty and organization, while the NQMC website gives users the ability to browse by measure domain, measurement setting, and organization. Both websites enable users to personalize their searches with specific filters to access content of interest faster, and compare clinical guidelines and quality measures right in the search results.

"The revamped design empowers our users to access this content whether using a laptop, tablet, or smartphone," says Mary Nix, NGC/NQMC staff lead, Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement, AHRQ.

The NQMC website includes a new Core Quality Measure filter to find measures developed by the Core Quality Measure Collaborative. Led by America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the National Quality Forum (NQF), the collaborative promotes standardization of measure use and collection across payers in the public and private sectors.

AHRQ has also unveiled a Multiple Chronic Conditions feature on the NGC site to make it easier for users to identify guidelines for treating patients with more than one condition, like diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension.

The websites, www.guideline.gov and www.qualitymeasures.ahrq.gov, provide clinicians, researchers, and others with access to more than 2,000 guideline summaries in NGC, and more than 2,200 measures summaries in NQMC at no cost. Combined, both websites receive about 3.6 million annual visits.

The redesigns were spearheaded by ECRI Institute and its technology subcontractor, Silverchair Information Systems.

To learn more, please visit www.ecri.org or contact ECRI Institute by telephone at (610) 825-6000, by e-mail at [email protected]; or by mail at 5200 Butler Pike, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462-1298, USA.

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About ECRI Institute
ECRI Institute (www.ecri.org), a nonprofit organization, dedicates itself to bringing the discipline of applied scientific research to healthcare to discover which medical procedures, devices, drugs, and processes are best to enable improved patient care. As pioneers in this science for nearly 50 years, ECRI Institute marries experience and independence with the objectivity of evidence-based research. Strict conflict-of-interest guidelines ensure objectivity. ECRI Institute is designated an Evidence-based Practice Center by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. ECRI Institute PSO is listed as a federally certified Patient Safety Organization by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Find ECRI Institute on Facebook (www.facebook.com/ECRIInstitute) and on Twitter (www.twitter.com/ECRI_Institute).

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SOURCE ECRI Institute

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