Improving Prioritisation Processes for Clinical Practice Guidelines: New Methods and an Evaluation From the National Heart Foundation of Australia.
Abstract BackgroundReleasing timely and relevant clinical guidelines is challenging for organisations globally. Priority setting is crucial as guideline development is resource intensive. Our aim, as a national organisation responsible for developing cardiovascular clinical guidelines, was to develop a method of generating and prioritising topics for future clinical guideline development in areas where guidance was most needed.MethodsSeveral novel processes were developed, adopted and evaluated including: 1) initial public consultation for health professionals and the general public to generate topics; 2) thematic and qualitative analysis, according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), to aggregate topics; 3) adapting a criteria-based matrix tool to prioritise topics; 4) achieving consensus through modified-nominal group technique and voting on priorities; and 5) process evaluation via survey of end-users. The latter was comprised of the organisation’s Expert Committee of 12 members with expertise across cardiology and public health, including two citizen representatives.ResultsTopics (n=405; reduced to n=278 when duplicates removed) were identified from public consultation responses (n=107 respondents). Thematic analysis synthesised 127 topics that were then categorised into 37 themes using ICD-11 codes. Exclusion criteria were applied (n=32 themes omitted), resulting in 5 short-listed topics: 1) congenital heart disease; 2) valvular heart disease; 3) hypercholesterolaemia, 4) hypertension and 5) ischaemic heart diseases and diseases of the coronary artery. The Expert Committee applied the prioritisation matrix to all five short-listed topics during a consensus meeting and voted to prioritise topics. Unanimous consensus was reached for the topic voted the highest priority: ischaemic heart disease and diseases of the coronary arteries, resulting in the decision to update the organisation’s 2016 clinical guidelines for acute coronary syndromes. Evaluation indicated that initial public consultation was highly valued by the Expert Committee, the matrix tool was easy to use and improved transparency in priority setting.ConclusionDeveloping a multistage, systematic process, incorporating public consultation, and an international classification system led to improved transparency in our clinical guideline priority setting processes and that topics chosen would have the greatest impact on health outcomes These methods are potentially applicable to other national and international organisations responsible for developing clinical guidelines.