Fact Sheet
This fact sheet describes the National Guideline Clearinghouse™, online at http://www.guideline.gov
Contents
What is the National Guideline Clearinghouse™?
What Are the Major Features of NGC?
What Criteria Must Guidelines Meet?
Who Uses NGC?
How Are Guidelines Submitted to NGC?
Hardware and Software Requirements
For More Information
What is the National Guideline Clearinghouse™?
The National Guideline Clearinghouse™ (NGC) is a public resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. It provides free online access to guideline summaries at http://www.guideline.gov.
Updated weekly with new content, NGC is produced by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Return to Contents
What Are the Major Features of NGC?
Key components of NGC include:
- Structured, standardized abstracts (summaries) containing major recommendations and other key elements from each guideline.
- A utility for comparing attributes of two or more guidelines in a side-by-side comparison.
- Syntheses of guidelines covering similar topics, highlighting areas of similarity and difference.
- Meta-tagging for each guideline summary derived from selected vocabularies in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS).
- Users' most recent searches and recently viewed summaries available on the home page.
Other user-friendly features include:
- "My NGC" Personalization allows users to personalize NGC to accommodate their specific interests and receive alerts on new and updated content of importance.
- New this Week enables users to see what new and updated content has been added each week.
- Advanced Search allows users to limit their search to guidelines that target a particular population group or publication year, include patient resources, and/or incorporate certain developmental criteria, such as a clinical algorithm or implementation plan.
- NGC Browse permits users to scan guidelines available on the NGC site by topic or guideline developer.
- Guidelines in Progress provides a list of guideline summaries being prepared for publication to the NGC Web site.
Return to Contents
What Criteria Must Guidelines Meet?
For a clinical practice guideline to be considered for inclusion in NGC, it must meet these criteria:
- The guideline must contain systematically developed recommendations, strategies, or other information to assist health care decisionmaking in specific clinical circumstances.
- The guideline must have been produced under the auspices of a relevant professional organization (e.g., medical specialty society, government agency, health care organization, or health plan).
- The guideline development process must have included a verifiable, systematic literature search and review of existing evidence published in peer-reviewed journals.
- The guideline must be current and the most recent version (i.e., developed, reviewed, or revised within the last 5 years) and it must be available upon request in print or electronic format (for free or for a fee), in the English language.
Return to Contents
Who Uses NGC?
NGC provides varied audiences with an easy-to-use mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on clinical practice guidelines:
- Physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals and provider organizations can review and use NGC in clinical decisionmaking and patient care.
- Hospitals, health care organizations and integrated delivery systems can use information accessible through NGC to adopt or adapt guidelines for their networks.
- Medical specialty and professional societies can use NGC resources in their own guideline development efforts.
- Researchers can use NGC to search for current guidelines on their topic of interest.
- Employee benefit managers can use information from NGC to assist them in making health care benefits purchasing decisions.
- Educational institutions can incorporate information accessible through NGC into their curricula and continuing education activities.
- Federal, State, and local government health care policymakers and specialists can use NGC in their quality assurance and program oversight efforts.
Return to Contents
How Are Guidelines Submitted to NGC?
Organizations interested in contributing guidelines can download NGC's Guideline Submission Kit at http://www.guideline.gov/submit/index.aspx.
Guidelines can be submitted in one of two ways:
- Electronic submissions (preferred) should be sent to Vivian Coates, NGC/NQMC Project Director, at info@guideline.gov.
- Two paper copies of the guideline and its supporting documentation, including a list of the titles being submitted for consideration, should be sent to:
Vivian Coates
NGC Project Director
ECRI Institute
5200 Butler Pike
Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462
Return to Contents
Hardware and Software Requirements
The NGC Web pages are best presented by the current versions of Microsoft® Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. These browsers render the site pages in nearly the same way. The same content is available in every browser but the display of that content may differ according to the capabilities of each browser. NGC also recommends disabling pop-up blockers, since some content appears in pop-up windows.
The following browsers have been tested for compatibility with the NGC site:
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer 9.0 (Windows®).
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer 8.0 (Windows®).
- Microsoft® Internet Explorer 7.0 (Windows®).
- Mozilla Firefox 3.5 (Windows).
- Safari 4 (Macintosh).
In addition, NGC has been designed specifically with accessibility in mind. All pages are checked with SortSite, the Web page analysis tool, to ensure compliance with both the W3C accessibility guidelines and the Rehabilitation Act Section 508 requirements.
Return to Contents
For More Information
More information on the National Guideline Clearinghouse™ can be obtained from NGC Web site (http://www.guideline.gov) or by contacting:
Mary Nix
Contract Officer
Office of Performance, Accountability, Resources, and Technology
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
540 Gaither Road, Room 6361
Rockville, MD 20850
Email: Mary.Nix@ahrq.hhs.gov
Users may also contact NGC by Email (info@guideline.gov) for more information on the guideline submission process or other NGC features.
Return to Contents
AHRQ Publication No. 12-M052-EF
Replaces AHRQ Publication No. 00-0047
Current as of August 2012
Internet Citation:
The National Guideline Clearinghouse™. Fact Sheet. AHRQ Publication No. 12-M052-EF, August 2012. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/ngcfact.htm
540 Gaither Road Rockville, MD 20850 