Guidelines Acceptance Program (GAP)
Clinical Intelligence (CI) methodology includes a Guidelines Acceptance Program (GAP) that follows standard performance improvement strategies. The GAP program is complete with a toolbox of resources provided to the organization, following a well-defined process to develop a program that can be duplicated by the organization as each opportunity for improvement is identified. There are four phases included in the GAP program:

1. Assess/Plan: Includes steering committee facilitation, focus groups/interviews, data assessment inventory, assessment matrix, GAP analysis and recommendations, project selection methodology, project management timeline, study/revision methodology, clinical guideline program policy, GAP indicators of success, service line support, care management support, and clinical informatics support.

2. Develop: Includes clinical indicators of success, monthly care manager reports, resource utilization reports, historical trend reports, clinical algorithms, protocol standing orders, literature search tips and inventory, integration of patient education, performance improvement measures, and core measures.

3. Implement: Design framework for clinical warehouse, provide direction for data collection, analysis and reports for indicators of success, recommend performance measures for balanced scorecard, implement pilot for approved clinical protocols, provide direction for effective implementation strategies and strategies to increase accessibility and protocol utilization, care manager reports, and protocol utilization tracking.

4. Evaluate: Includes focus groups/feedback, data assessment inventory, assessment matrix, GAP analysis and recommendations, and indicators of success report.