[Knowledge management in rehabilitation--proposal for a systematic development of clinical practice guidelines]

In the past ten years, the German pension scheme has launched several initiatives that can be regarded as milestones on the way to a scientifically founded rehabilitation system. These initiatives were: the Rehab Commission (1989 - 1991), the Quality Assurance Programme (since 1994), and the German Research Funding Programme "Rehabilitation Sciences" (in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, since 1996). As a next step on this way, we propose an initiative aiming at a systematic development and implementation of clinical practice guidelines for the main diagnostic groups in rehabilitation. Guidelines for diagnostic and therapeutic decisions are an instrument to sift through the abundance of fast changing knowledge in medicine, to assess the existing knowledge according to its scientific evidence, and to transform it into recommendations for clinical practice. In rehabilitation, guidelines seem to be particularly needed because specialized knowledge is mostly disseminated through an informal "training on the job". Our proposal intends to establish a reference centre for each of the main indications (cardiology, musculoskeletal diseases, etc.). These centres should cooperate with experts from clinical practice and research, as well as with representatives of the cost-carrying agencies and patient organisations, and should systematically analyse the processes of rehabilitation in the most important diagnostic groups. Guided by a "process matrix of rehabilitation", these analyses should identify the points at which far-reaching decisions are called for during the processes of rehabilitation. At these points, the knowledge base available for rational decisions should be examined. When there is no sufficient scientific knowledge, consensus conferences should be organized in order to collect and assess the available expertise of practitioners and to establish guidelines for clinical practice. Since compliance with such guidelines could be easily checked in the routine quality assurance programme, this proposal seems to be a promising way of improving the knowledge base in rehabilitation in a rather short time.