Clinical practice guidelines at an HMO: development and implementation in a quality improvement model

Harvard Community Health Plan (HCHP) is adapting to clinical medicine the managerial principles and methods of quality improvement theory that were originally developed and successfully applied in industrial settings. An essential step in applying the quality improvement cycle to clinical medicine is the setting of standards or specifications for clinical care. HCHP has chosen to focus its standard-setting efforts on the development of clinical algorithms, which provide an excellent basis for specifying and communicating optimal care processes and for evaluating actual clinical care. When implemented effectively, clinical algorithms may improve quality and decrease costs by guiding clinicians toward more standardized, high-quality, cost-effective clinical strategies and by facilitating more valid measurement of clinical process and outcomes. This article describes the evolution, structure, methods, and future agenda of the Algorithm Based Clinical Quality Improvement Process (ABCQIP) at HCHP.