Toward a continuous quality improvement paradigm for hemodialysis providers with preliminary suggestions for clinical practice monitoring and measurement.

Background: Consensus processes using the clinical literature as the primary source for information generally drive projects to draft clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). Most such literature citations describe special projects that are not part of an organized quality management initiative, and the publication/review/consensus process tends to be long. This project describes an initiative to develop and explore a flexible and dedicated data-driven paradigm for deciding new CPGs that could be rapidly responsive to changing medical knowledge and practice.