As the original commissioning association for the Mercy Conference, the Congress recognized the need to continue to revise and improve existing professional guidelines. When the Congress met in Palm Springs, California in November 1992, the membership passed a resolution to hold a Guidelines Development Planning Conference to facilitate the formation of an advisory council.
State association members felt it particularly important to provide ample opportunity for input regarding the Mercy Guidelines (established at the Mercy Conference Jan. 25-30 in Burlingame, California), and that a second conference would be planned to handle any necessary revisions in a timely manner.
The Congress also recognizes that many other issues will need to be resolved relative to the ongoing process of guidelines development. Participants in the Guidelines Development Planning Conference will represent the ACA, ICA, CCE, ACC, NACA, FCLB, and COCSA. Additional participants have been selected from the academic research and clinical practice communities. The 17 participants will likely discuss such issues as funding the guideline development process, selection criteria, and term length for the advisory council members, as well as setting priority goals for the council.
Expected to be high on the list of priorities, will be revision of existing guidelines relative to proposals set forth by the profession's 49,000 members. The advisory council to be created by this Guidelines Development Planning Conference will also address other related issues of accepting guideline input/proposals, dissemination of guidelines, quality assurance instruction, tracking the effect of guidelines on clinical practice, monitoring the use of practice parameters, selection of panel members for future guidelines development conferences, and recommending priorities for future research.
The Congress is an association of chiropractic state associations that represents practicing chiropractors across the country. As such, we realize that chiropractic practitioners' recommendations and proposals are essential to the development of optimal, dynamic, clinically applicable practice guidelines and parameters. The Congress represents 48 state chiropractic associations and is open to your input.
Please place your concerns or proposals in writing and add to this dynamic quality assurance process. It is our intent to support the development of valid, reliable practice guidelines that are flexible, logical and applicable to the clinical practice of chiropractic. To assure such outcomes, the Congress supports:
- guidelines development process of consensus that includes representative participation of those affected by the guidelines;
- guidelines based upon current literature and expert opinion of practicing chiropractors;
- provisions for review, input, and submission of proposals by concerned persons affected by the guidelines.
- guidelines monitoring and regularly scheduled reviews that serve to identify topics in need of revision, to insure that such guidelines continue to accurately reflect consensus within the profession.
Future articles will follow to keep the profession updated on this dynamic guidelines development process.
If you have concerns regarding the guidelines development process or a proposal for consideration in furthering guidelines development, please forward your information to:
Congress of Chiropractic State Associations
37 West Broad Street
Suite 785
Columbus, Ohio 43215
Rick A. McMichael, DC
Canton, Ohio