Pathways Push the Envelope on Standardized Care: Narrower Protocols May Stimulate Higher Performance and Control Costs (Evidence-Based Medicine‪)‬

For decades clinical guidelines have been the gold standard for improving patient care, but now pathways are emerging as a better way to optimize care. Clinical guidelines often are stodgy, behemoth documents used as references. In contrast, pathways in medical oncology are being used as the central tool in comprehensive efforts to standardize therapy and tackle issues such as costs and physician compliance that have been overlooked in clinical guidelines.