The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) funds research on evidence-based practices. How does the LMBP evidence gathering process differ from AHRQs?
A. CDC is conducting its own Laboratory Medicine Best Practices (LMBP) evidence reviews. Essentially CDC and AHRQ’s evidence gathering process for published literature would be very similar. One major difference, however, is CDC’s LMBP also solicits unpublished quality improvement studies and data for inclusion in the evidence review. Also, the LMBP evidence review inclusion criteria allow inclusion of study designs commonly excluded in AHRQ evidence reviews, as the LMBP methods allow for commonly used quality improvement study designs, as well as unpublished information.
