Critical factors for the effectiveness of clinical pathway in improving care outcomes

Nowadays, Clinical Pathway (CP) is becoming a promising healthcare management protocol due to its positive effectiveness on the care outcomes. But there are many factors that may influence the application effectiveness of clinical pathway thereby some unsuccessful cases are reported. To date, little research has been systematically conducted to identify and explore these factors. Under this consideration, this research dedicates to finding out critical factors that can influence the performance of clinical pathway based on a literature review. The identified critical success factors are discussed along the three phases of the implementation process for clinical pathway (i.e., CP design process, CP execution process, CP evaluation process). And totally 8 vital factors are summarized as “multidisciplinary group involvement”, “Decent applicable object”, “Flexibility of clinical pathway” in the design process; “Education to the care providers”, “Continual optimization”, “Computerized clinical pathway” and “Psychology influence” in the execution process; “Statistics source and analysis” in the evaluation process.