Review of methods and study designs of evaluations related to clinical pathways.

Conclusions Clinical pathways evaluations commonly use pragmatic study designs, straightforward statistical tests and cost-consequence analyses. More HealthPathways program evaluations focused on patient and economic outcomes, clinical pathway evaluations in a primary care setting and cost-effectiveness analyses of clinical pathways are needed.What is known about the topic? HealthPathways is a web-based program that originated from Canterbury, New Zealand, and has seen uptake elsewhere in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. The HealthPathways program aims to assist the provision of consistent and integrated health services through dedicated, localised pathways for various health conditions specific to the health region. Evaluations of HealthPathways program focused on patient and economic outcomes have been limited.What does this paper add? This review synthesises the academic literature of clinical pathways evaluations in order to inform a subsequent HealthPathways evaluation. The focus of the synthesis was on the analytical methods and study designs used in the previous evaluations. The previous clinical pathway evaluations have been pragmatic in nature with relatively straightforward study designs and analysis.What are the implications for practitioners? There is a need for more economic and patient outcome evaluations for HealthPathways programs. More sophisticated statistical analyses and economic evaluations could add value to these evaluations, where appropriate and tak...

Source: Australian Health Review - August 9, 2018 Category: Hospital Management Authors: Lee XJ, Blythe R, Choudhury AAK, Simmons T, Graves N, Kularatna S Tags: Aust Health Rev Source Type: research