Clinical coding recommendations for NICE guidance

We work with the clinical classifications service of NHS Digital to provide relevant clinical coding information for interventional procedure and medical technologies guidance.

These classifications are required for use across the NHS nationally and are made up of groupings of concepts (codes), along with definitions and rules for their use.

OPCS-4

OPCS-4 is a mandatory NHS data standard, and its output forms part of the data flows for Commissioning Data Sets and national Hospital Episode Statistics (HES). For each published interventional procedures guidance, NICE and NHS England’s Terminology & Classifications Delivery Service work collaboratively to identify the most appropriate OPCS-4 procedure codes and, where relevant, ICD-10 diagnosis codes to support clinical coding.

These are published on a lookup table that provides access to the clinical classification codes associated with the NICE HealthTech Guidance (HTG). It should be used in conjunction with published NICE HTG guidance.

NICE HealthTech Coding Guidance.

Find out more about OPCS-4.

SNOMED CT

SNOMED CT is the standard clinical terminology for the NHS to support recording of clinical information. This supports data management and analysis to support patient care, while enabling data extraction and data exchange.

Find out more about SNOMED CT.

Why we use these classifications

They enable the provision of data on surgical procedures and technologies. This forms part of national database collections for statistical and epidemiological analysis.

The Terminology & Classifications Delivery Service of NHS England  is the central definitive source for clinical coding guidance. It determines the coding standards associated with the classifications (OPCS-4 and ICD-10) to be used across the NHS.

Find out more about the Clinical Classifications Service of NHS England.