[The alignment of efficiency studies with clinical guidelines. Where are the opportunities for improvement?]

Objective: To provide insight as well as challenges and opportunities to more effectively align Dutch efficiency research with clinical guidelines.

Design: Evaluation research METHOD: The alignment with existing clinical guidelines regarding medical specialist care was analyzed for 111 efficiency studies funded by the Dutch national health care research programme, and completed between 2018-2023.

Results: Ninety percent of the studies could be linked to a clinical guideline. A limited number (19%) were actually integrated in a guideline, whereas 22% of the studies did not (sufficiently) align with the related questions from the clinical guidelines.

Conclusion: By providing insight into the processes, it becomes clear that choices must be made in various stages. The results show that the alignment of efficiency research with clinical guidelines is (still) suboptimal. Close collaboration between ZonMw, the Knowledge Institute and relevant stakeholders is therefore essential. The goal is to optimize the processes and make current, well-defined knowledge quickly and effectively available for clinical practice.