Evidence-based medicine meets goal-directed health care.

Evidence-based medicine and goal-directed, patient-centered health care seem, at times, like parallel universes, though, at a conceptual level, they are perfectly compatible. Part of the problem is that many of the kinds of information required for decision making in primary care are often unavailable or difficult to find. Several case examples are used to illustrate this problem, and reasons and solutions are suggested. The goal-directed health care model could be helpful for directing the search for evidence that is relevant to the decisions that patients and their primary care physicians must make on a regular basis.