News: National Guidelines, Quality Measures Clearinghouse shutting down

The National Guidelines Clearinghouse and the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse, under the auspices of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), will be closing on July 16 due to a lack of federal funding, the Patient Safety and Quality Insider reported.

The clearinghouses were set up as central sites to help hospitals, clinicians, and others in the healthcare field find evidence-based information on which to set policy, create clinical treatment plans, and objectively measure outcomes.

The guidelines and measures on the sites are submitted by various professional or academic health organizations and must meet detailed criteria to be included in each database. In the past, guidelines and measures were updated and outdated information was removed, but the sites are not accepting any new submissions in anticipation of closing.

The announcements on each site note that AHRQ has received “expressions of interest from stakeholders” that want to takeover maintenance of the databases, but AHRQ officials have declined to identify who those stakeholders are, according to the Patient Safety and Quality Insider.

If public or private stakeholders are found to take over the clearinghouses, ARHQ still hasn’t decided what role it will play.

Though the two sites will be a thing of the past, the information will still be available from each of the professional societies, academy, or other healthcare groups that originated the material, Karen Schoelles, MD, SM, FACP, director of ECRI Institute’s Penn Medicine Evidence-based Practice Center and project director for both clearinghouses.

Though the information will exist elsewhere, the clearinghouses provided a one-stop-shop for all the resources stakeholders might need, the Patient Safety and Quality Insider reported. Facilities and providers are encouraged to download the materials they may need or want before the sites go dark on July 16.

Editor’s note: To read the Patient Safety Insider’s coverage of this story, click here. To visit the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse, click here. To visit the National Guideline Clearinghouse, click here.