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Legal Implications of Medical Practice Guidelines

This research explores the legal implications of medical practice guidelines. A discussion of what medical practice guidelines are is presented, as are discussions of why such guidelines are developed and how such guidelines are developed. Legal implications of the use of medical practice guidelines are discussed, as are patient responsibilities associated with the use of such guidelines.

What Medical Practice Guidelines Are

Medical practice standards, policies, parameters, or guidelines are specific statements of what should or should not be done in particular clinical circumstances. Most have been developed by professional specialty organizations for use by practitioners. Increasingly, practice standards use the results of outcomes research in establishing general guidelines for preventing, diagnosing, or treating certain clinical conditions. Many observers believe that the primary value of outcomes assessment is its potential to produce the data necessary to develop medical practice guidelines that will improve the practice of medicine and, consequently, patient health outcomes.

Theoretically, outcomes assessment can offer a data base for deciding what works and how and when to use it. Only a small proportion of medical services, however, have been subjected to rigorous testing to determine their actual effectiveness or relative merit compared with alternatives.

The Institute of Medicine defines practice guidelines as "systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances." As is evident from this definition, the term "practice guidelines" may represent statements with widely different functions. To distinguish among the types of guidelines that exist, authors of these documents have created a morass of terms, many of which refer to similar entities, hence the terms clinical practice parameter, clinic practice guideli...

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Legal Implications of Medical Practice Guidelines. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 11:42, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1694020.html