A guide to finding and evaluating best practices health care information on the Internet: the truth is out there?

The advent of virtually free Internet access has opened large vistas of health care information to those willing to invest a small amount of time and energy learning how to perform searches using browser software. Health care providers, organizations, and professional associations, among many others, publish "best practices" information for both administrative and clinical audiences, making these recommendations among the fastest-growing types of health care information appearing on the World Wide Web. The problem is how to find best practices among the wealth of resources on the Internet and then how to separate the proverbial wheat from the chaff. WHO IS SEEKING BEST PRACTICES ON THE INTERNET? Best practice describes a process or technique whose employment results in improved patient and/or organizational outcomes. Health care providers, managed care organizations, administrators, payers, and policy analysts are all interested in improving the quality of health care and are likely to be customers of best practices informational resources. HOW TO EVALUATE THE QUALITY OF BEST PRACTICES INFORMATION? Once the information is available on the Internet, the problem for the searcher shifts from one of quantity to quality. The best practices information seeker should stop and ask a number of questions about the quality of information, its sources, and the methods used to obtain it.

The "truth" may be out there some-where in cyberspace, but locating best practices information and evaluating its quality require new skills and patience and time to practice and develop them to the point of efficiency.