Clinical pathway

Clinical pathways, also known as care pathways, critical pathways, integrated care pathways, or care maps, are one of the main tools used to manage the quality in healthcare concerning the standardization of care processes. It has been shown that their implementation reduces the variability in clinical practice and improves outcomes. Clinical pathways promote organized and efficient patient care based on evidence based practice. Clinical pathways optimize outcomes in the acute care and home care settings. Generally clinical pathways refer to medical guidelines. However a single pathway may refer to guidelines on several topics in a well specified context.