NICE looking to double guidance produced in 2004
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is to double the amount of guidance it produces next year, its chairman has said.
“The exponential growth of NICE guidance continues,” Professor
Sir Michael Rawlins told the NICE conference in Birmingham last week.
Around
80 individual pieces of work are expected to appear during 2004.
To date, NICE has produced 72 technology appraisals, 48 of which are
on
pharmaceuticals, covering 217 individual products. Sir Michael pointed
out that only two have specifically rejected products for use in the
National Health Service in England and Wales. NICE is more likely to
recommend that products are only used in specific patient groups or as
part of formal clinical research programmes.
The focus of the NICE conference was on the implementation of guidance.
NICE is changing the way it presents its guidance, particularly to general
practitioners and patients, so as to make it clearer and easier to implement.
One topic of discussion was how far primary care trusts and other organisations
should be measured on the extent to which they have implemented NICE
guidelines. From April next year, the Commission for Health Care Audit and Inspection (CHAI) will take over responsibility for inspecting NHS
bodies from the Commission for Health Improvement. The chairman-designate
of CHAI, Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, sounded equivocal on whether compliance
with guidance should be measured by CHAI or by NICE itself.
However, the minister with responsibility for CHAI and NICE, Lord Warner,
speaking later in the conference, was much clearer, saying: “We
see it as a key role of CHAI to monitor implementation of NICE guidance.” This
will be set out in directions from the Department of Health to CHAI on
what it is to do after its formal establishment in April 2004. “We
want CHAI to be seen as the trustworthy, independent monitor of the quality
of NHS care,” he added.
On the subject of star ratings for NHS trusts, Sir Ian said that CHAI
will still be measuring achievement against relevant targets, as these
were matters of importance to the Government. However, CHAI would be
interested in painting a much richer picture of local health economies
and that targets would be just a subset of this, he added. |
