Background Searches

In this part, you'll look for the best interventions (things that clinicians should be doing) to improve outcomes for their patients. (e.g., to achieve better diabetes control rates in practice, we should see our patients more frequently and intensify therapy (insulin, GLP-1 agonists, etc.)

Prioritize the highest levels of evidence for interventions and/or best practices recommended by accepted guidelines.

• Using PubMed Clinical Queries, free text in the condition/diagnosis and the outcome measure you're interested in, then set the Filter Category to Clinical Studies, set the Filter to the study type you want (i.e., "Therapy"/"Diagnostic") and Scope as Narrow, initially.  Then adjust these settings as needed.

• For guidelines, you can search the topic in PubMed and add "guideline[Filter]" to your search or you can browse ECRI for guidelines.

Avoid textbook (i.e., Up To Date) recommendations that aren't otherwise evidence-based.

Here, you're looking for evidence about HOW to get physicians/practice to change their practice. (e.g., to get clinicians to see diabetes patients more frequently and intensify therapy, we'll sent out monthly reports on our patients with poor control, then for those patients, we will create an alert in their charts suggesting intensifying therapy).

First, look at the reviews from the (now defunct) Cochrane Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group.

Then search PubMed or the TRIP database for additional information if needed.