[Medical guidelines in Germany--current status and future developments]

Medical guidelines are considered more and more as a meaningful and necessary tool ensuring a high quality of medical care. However, some doubts were recently mentioned concerning the quality of German guidelines. In 1997, the Society of Physicians of Germany and the Association of Panel Physicians have therefore initiated a program for the promotion of the quality of guidelines in Germany. Tools have been developed with the purpose to report and assess the quality of guidelines. Additionally, a "clearing-procedure for guidelines" and recommendations for the development of evidence-based guidelines were introduced. Background and content of these evaluation tools are reported in this article.