Quality standards for thirty one new clinical areas are to be produced by NICE in the latest round of development, on topics including asthma, bipolar disorder, diabetes and four different types of cancer. The quality standards will join the suite of four already published by NICE, and a further nine currently in development.
NICE quality standards are a set of specific, concise statements that act as markers of high-quality, clinically and cost-effective patient care. They aim to help healthcare practitioners and commissioners of care deliver excellence in services.
NICE quality standards play a pivotal role in the NHS outcomes framework 2011/12, a national overview of aims and objectives for the NHS in improving patient outcomes, which was published earlier this week by the Department of Health.
Subject to parliamentary approval, the new NHS Commissioning Board will use NICE quality standards to develop a set of national outcomes, which will then be translated into local indicators used to hold GP commissioning consortia to account.
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