MCG Health Releases 26th Edition of Care Guidelines
“As scientific evidence evolves, MCG’s editors will continue to provide an unbiased approach as they update MCG care guidelines.’ – Jon Shreve, MCG President and CEO
SEATTLE (PRWEB)
March 01, 2022
MCG Health, part of the Hearst Health network and an industry leader in technology-enabled evidence-based guidance, announces its release of the 26th edition of the MCG care guidelines. This year’s updates include new guidance to support evolving levels of care and health equity, as well as analytical insights on hospital admit rates and length of stay data for acute viral illness (including COVID-19).
MCG care guidelines, widely recognized as a common clinical language between payers and providers, are now used by a majority of U.S. health plans, and nearly 2,600 hospitals. To develop the 26th edition, MCG clinical editors reviewed 188,564 scientific articles leading to a total of 52,550 unique citations in the MCG evidence base. Nearly 5,700 of these citations are new to this edition reflecting the high volume of published scientific literature analyzed by the MCG team.
In the 26th edition, MCG Inpatient & Surgical Care includes five new hospital-at-home guidelines to support acute care outside of a hospital setting and three new Observation Care guidelines. To support ongoing efforts to address health equity, MCG made content updates to mitigate potential systemic biases and also expanded use of a social determinants of health assessment to help healthcare professionals proactively identify barriers to a safe hospital discharge.
In the spring of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a public health emergency, MCG released free Acute Viral Illness guidelines to support the management of SARS-CoV-2 patients. With the 26th edition, MCG updated these guidelines across multiple care settings and added new hospital inpatient data featuring admit rates and length of stay (LOS) by age group (adult and pediatric).
With the rapid increase of specialty medications in the pharmaceutical market, MCG Ambulatory Care and Behavioral Health Care were updated to include new guidelines addressing the clinical effectiveness and potential risks for selected pharmacological agents. Several of Ambulatory Care’s imaging guidelines were also updated to include evidence-based, clinical indications for transgender patients.
MCG Behavioral Health Care, Chronic Care, and Transitions of Care were updated with new calculators to help screen for and assess the severity of depression and anxiety in patients. Selected assessments within Chronic Care and Transitions of Care are now tagged with Z-codes (a type of ICD-10 code) which can be used to identify patients with non-clinical conditions associated with social determinants of health. The inclusion of these codes will allow MCG users to quickly locate relevant assessments and document potential challenges to a patient’s recovery.
Commenting on the release of the 26th edition, MCG President and CEO, Jon Shreve, said, “As scientific evidence evolves, MCG’s editors will continue to provide an unbiased approach as they update MCG care guidelines. Healthcare professionals have learned to trust the independent nature of MCG evidence and this independence serves as a foundation for our patient-focused content, technology, and customer service.”
MCG clients who wish to learn more about the new updates in the 26th edition can register for training webinars available on the MCG website at: https://www.mcg.com/client-resources/education-training/escholar-webinar-training/.
About MCG Health
MCG, part of the Hearst Health network, helps healthcare organizations implement informed care strategies that proactively and efficiently move people toward health. MCG’s transparent assessment of the latest research and scholarly articles, along with our own data analysis, gives patients, providers, and payers the vetted information they need to feel confident in every care decision, in every moment. For more information visit http://www.mcg.com or follow our Twitter handle at @MCG_Health.
About Hearst Health
The mission of Hearst Health is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person’s health journey. Care guidance from Hearst Health reaches the majority of people in the U.S. The Hearst Health network includes FDB (First Databank), Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, and MHK (formerly MedHOK). Hearst also holds a minority interest in the precision medicine and oncology analytics company M2Gen. Follow Hearst Health on Twitter @HearstHealth and LinkedIn @Hearst-Health.
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