FAQ

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1. What is The Guideline Advantage™ program?

The Guideline Advantage is a jointly directed quality improvement program from the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association. This program works with practices’ existing EHR or health technology platform (system where the site enters clinical or administrative data) to extract relevant patient data and provide quarterly reports and benchmarking on adherence to guidelines.

2. Who is eligible to participate in The Guideline Advantage?

Acute care facilities, physicians, assistants and advanced practice nurses practicing in cardiology, neurology, endocrinology and oncology, as well as osteopathic medicine, family practice, general practice and internal medicine are eligible and are the most likely to reap the benefits of The Guideline Advantage.

3. What are the benefits to participating physicians/practices?

On-demand, Online Quality Improvement Information
Available Physician-level Reporting
Tools for Creating Action Lists
Alignment with Key National Initiatives
National and State Benchmarking
Practice Network Opportunities
Free Access to the Basic Model
The Power of Advanced Technology

View more information about these benefits.

4. What is the cost to participate in the program?

The Guideline Advantage offers two program models; a Basic model and a Premium model. The program does not charge participating practices for the Basic model. The Premium model will have a one-time implementation fee, as well as a yearly licensing fee.

5. How does The Guideline Advantage help me achieve my business goals?

The Guideline Advantage can improve many aspects of your practice. In addition to the primary goal of improving patient health, we help streamline your efforts to manage your practice effectively. Participating outpatient practices benefit from on-demand access to their data, providing performance feedback and comparative benchmarking information. Results from submitted data are intended to help you identify and focus on specific areas for improvement, and highlight better practices, tools and resources to drive quality. The program includes a recognition component to publicly acknowledge inaugural participation and performance achievements by participating practices.

Additionally, data from Forward Health Group’s web-based platform, Population Manager®, can also be used to complete American Board of Internal Medicine’s Self-Directed Practice Improvement Module (PIM) and to earn credit for ABIM Maintenance of Certification (MOC). Additionally, The Guideline Advantage will continue to align the program with those meaningful use (MU) measures that will be most directly related to conditions and risk factors of interest to the ACS/ADA/AHA. Currently, the core clinical quality measures are captured in our measure sets.

6. What is the operational model of The Guideline Advantage program?

Analysis through Forward Health Group
Online access to data reports
Sharing of tools and interventions
Recognition of inaugural participants
Recognition for achievement in quality improvement

7. Can I participate in The Guideline Advantage if I am not utilizing an electronic health record (EHR) or health technology system?

No, the program does not accept paper records. The first step in participation is implementing an electronic health record or health technology platform. There are a number of options for practices to select when considering an electronic health record or health technology platform. The Guideline Advantage does not endorse a specific vendor.

8. What is the technical platform for The Guideline Advantage?

Forward Health Group is the technology vendor. Practices will upload their clinical data to Forward Health Group's customized platform for their data to be analyzed and reported.

9. How is The Guideline Advantage program different from the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke and Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure programs?

The Guideline Advantage promotes optimal outpatient care and seeks to bring similar evidence-based measures of quality used in hospital-based care into the broad continuum of care offered in the ambulatory clinics and offices around the country. The Guideline Advantage assesses a broader scope of measures relevant to cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular and stroke care. This includes primary and secondary event prevention and promotion of healthy lifestyles for all patients over the age of 18. Get With The Guidelines-Stroke and Get With The Guidelines-Heart Failure target quality of acute care during the patient's hospital stay.

Additionally, while the guidelines are consistent, the inpatient and outpatient program model differs. The hospital program is a Web-based platform, powered by the Patient Management Too™l (PMT) created by Outcome Sciences, Inc. The outpatient program is not Web-based. Instead, data is collected directly through your electronic health record or health technology system.

10. What type of data do participating medical practices provide for The Guideline Advantage?

Participating practices provide basic demographic information, medical history, risk factors, prior events, ongoing treatments, lab work, vital signs, medications and contraindications to medications along with additional data measures commonly being collected in the EHR systems.

11. Does The Guideline Advantage program place more value on computer-driven decision making and less value on the healthcare professional's critical thinking?

The Guideline Advantage places the highest value on the healthcare professional's critical thinking skills for improving patient outcomes. The reports and technology are tools to aid critical thinking and assist you in the study of your own practices in comparison with others. Additionally, The Guideline Advantage statistics help you consider what works for the greatest number of patients and document the clinical decisions for individuals you believe fall outside the statistical range.

12. Will there be a recognition program for The Guideline Advantage?

The Guideline Advantage will recognize inaugural participants of the program as leaders in quality improvement. Additionally, the program will begin implementing an achievement recognition program after program reporting has begun.

13. Will The Guideline Advantage help my practice achieve Meaningful Use of my healthcare technology/EHR system?

While The Guideline Advantage does not have a formal software platform which could serve as a module for certification, The Guideline Advantage looks to focus its program’s data elements and measures with both the Meaningful Use (MU) core set objectives and core clinical quality measures. Currently, the eligible professionals (EPs) core clinical quality measures are captured in our ideal data set. However, as the program accepts any and all of the data elements outlined, it does not mean that all participants in The Guideline Advantage will comply with MU if participating in our program.

The Guideline Advantage will continue to be flexible as the measures and core set established by CMS continues to expand and will look toward continued alignment with the federal standards. The Guideline Advantage is poised to serve the ambulatory setting as the adoption of EHRs continues at a rapid pace and regional extension centers offer services to generate continued uptake of such certified electronic health technology.