How Does ACP Develop Clinical Recommendations?
ACP Clinical Guidelines, Guidance Statements, Practice Points, and Best Practice Advice papers are produced through a team effort involving the ACP Clinical Guidelines Committee, Population Health and Medical Science Committee, topic experts, and ACP Clinical Policy staff. ACP follows scientific and rigorous processes for developing evidence-based clinical guidelines and is the only US organization and physician specialty society in the world to be designated as a GRADE Center and AGREE Center. ACP is also a founding member of the Cochrane US Network.
For more information on the development of ACP's Clinical Practice Guidelines and Guidance Statements, please see our published methods papers:
- The Development of Clinical Guidelines and Guidance Statements by the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians: Update of Methods
- Disclosure of Interests and Management of Conflicts of Interest in Clinical Guidelines and Guidance Statements: Methods
- Incorporating Economic Evidence in Clinical Guidelines: A Framework
For more information on the development of ACP’s Practice Points, please see the published methodology paper, The Development of Living, Rapid Practice Points: Summary of Methods.
ACP develops clinical guidelines in accordance with standards set by the National Academy of Medicine (previously called the Institute of Medicine) and the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N). For transparency, ACP completes a GIN standards reporting form for each guideline it produces. These forms for active ACP clinical guidelines can be accessed below and are also published in G-I-N's International Guideline Library.
- Acute Pain Management (Guideline)
- Antibody Response and Natural Immunity Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection (Practice Points)
- CQ-HCQ for Treatment of COVID-19 (Practice Points)
- Depression (Guideline)
- Diabetes (Guideline)
- Diagnosis and Management of Diverticulitis (Guideline)
- Diagnostic Evaluation and Interventions to Prevent Recurrence After Diverticulitis (Guideline)
- High Flow Nasal Oxygen (Guideline)
- Mask (N95, Surgical, and Cloth) Use to Prevent COVID-19? (Practice Points)
- Migraine Prevention (Guideline)
- Osteoporosis (Guideline)
- Point of Care Ultrasonography (Guideline)
- Remdesivir For Treatment of COVID-19 (Practice Points)
History of Guideline Development at ACP
ACP is one of the oldest guideline programs in the US. ACP officially initiated its guideline development program in 1981 but has participated in the development of evidence-based clinical recommendations since the late 1970s.
More about the Clinical Guidelines Committee