A collection of evidence-based practice guidelines can be found at the National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) Web site, http://www.guideline.gov/.  The development of this site provides a valuable service to the health care community.

The NGC is sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services.  The purpose of the site is to disseminate information on clinical guidelines and to promote their use.  Individuals or groups are invited to submit clinical guidelines for inclusion in the site.  Specific criteria are outlined.

The NGC site is used by all types of healthcare providers—generally those who are searching online for evidence-based practice guidelines.  According to the site statistics, the Web site is visited approximately 1 million time per month.  Weekly notices to go 26,500 subscribers

The site contains more than 2,000 structured summaries about the guideline, its developer and how it was developed.  Clinicians can browse or search by key words.  The site provides a number of features to make the information accessible and useful to clinicians: 1) the summary guidelines can be downloaded to PDAs for ease of use, 2) a utility allows users to compare guidelines, and a synthesis is developed by NGC staff, 3) there is an electronic forum for exchange of ideas, 4) annotated bibliography database containing citation information, and 5) expert commentary, and 6) an archive of guidelines.