Coordinating locally 'owned' treatment guidelines

South West Thames Regional Health Authority established and commissioned a regional guidelines unit to coordinate the introduction of a set of treatment guidelines on the management of common medical emergencies into all the acute intaking National Health Service (NHS) hospitals throughout the region. All hospitals were offered a set of template guidelines to be used at their discretion for producing their own customised equivalent. They were also offered full typing and production facilities, together with printing costs if publication was achieved by a target deadline (1 August 1993). In 11 of the 14 NHS hospitals guidelines were available to hospital staff by the target deadline, and one set was produced for a non-NHS hospital. In two hospitals the target date was not met, and one other declined to take part. As part of the project the unit assessed the extent to which the published guidelines were adapted to meet the requirements of each individual hospital. The template offered guidelines on 34 topic titles. No hospital used all core titles of the original template; titles were omitted or replaced in some, and added in others. Where the original guideline titles were used, there was almost always some customisation--changes in sentence structure, names or contact numbers, alterations in drugs and doses or the addition or omission of entire sections. By using an established resource, sets of customised, locally determined treatment guidelines were introduced with relative ease into most of the acute hospitals in a UK health region.