Health Guidelines

A Health Guideline is comprised of the following required elements: a guideline name, a defined patient population, an intervention, and a time frame for the intervention. These elements provide a clinical decision framework for the treatment of specific patient populations.

Once these elements are defined within a Health Guideline, all patients who meet the criteria will be attached to the guideline and can be tracked through reporting or managed using encounter-level alerts.

General: the name of the guideline and the rationale or clinical recommendation that supports the guideline are detailed in the General tab.

Population: the patient population is defined over two tabs—Population and Population Cont. In these tabs, a user can select demographic criteria, such as race and age, and clinical criteria, such as diagnosis and blood pressure reading, to specify which patients should be included in the guideline.

Intervention: the treatment or clinical action required for patients who meet the population criteria is defined in the Intervention tab. Interventions can include orders, visit codes, or screenings, and although multiple interventions can be specified per guideline, a patient only needs to meet one to satisfy the guideline.

Timing: how frequently an intervention needs to be performed for a patient is specified in the Timing tab. The frequency of the intervention can span multiple years or months or be required as often as every visit.

Creating Health Guidelines