With more than 1000 new guidelines produced annually over the past decade, it is impossible for the practicing family physician to determine which ones should be adapted into their clinical practice. The Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Ontario Medical Association formed the Guideline Advisory Committee (GAC) in 1997 to assess and disseminate guidelines that would improve the quality and utilization of health care services in the province. Over the past 3 years the GAC has developed a strategy to identify important topics, to rank guidelines published on these topics based on the quality of their development, and to reformat guidelines as necessary to make them user-friendly for implementation in clinical practice. The GAC is currently assessing a number of strategies to enhance the dissemination of selected guidelines to improve the quality of care delivered in the province.

A method of selecting, reviewing, and endorsing clinical practice guidelines has been established in the province of Ontario, Canada. Recommended guideline summaries are posted on a Web site with links to full text for easy access by practicing physicians (www.gacguidelines.ca).

Strategies for the successful implementation and impact evaluation of recommended guidelines are currently in development.

Clinical practice guidelines are statements that are systematically developed to assist physisican and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. (1) Published guidelines have become widely available through Internet technology; it has been estimated that more than 2500 exist. Most are produced by specific interest groups (eg, national societies and pharmaceutical companies), disseminated by publication in a medical journal or traditional mail, and seldom demonstrate any effect on clinical practice. (2) Such a large volume of guidelines creates confusion for clinicians who often do not follow any of them because of the time required to assess their quality.