Consultants' catch-up

Greetings from the north east this month. I’m Gill Mathews, the newest member of the implementation consultants’ team. Our job is simply to improve the uptake and implementation of NICE guidance. We do this by working with the NHS, and also with local authorities, government offices and others with an interest in improving health and well-being, and improving care for patients. Our recently updated strategy helps to focus our work on the organisations which we most need to be supporting: those who are struggling to meet the healthcare commission core and developmental standards relating to implementation of guidance; those who have less developed strategies for implementation; and those who can most influence relevant future developments in local health communities.

August is supposed to be a quiet month – but this year the implementation consultants have all been kept really busy. I joined the team in May, and spent the first few weeks doing my best to catch up with the accumulated knowledge of my colleagues who have now been actively visiting organisations for just over a year. At the beginning of July I began visiting NHS and other organisations in the north east area, working from my home, perched up in the highest village in England, nestled in the beautiful north Pennines.

So what are my first impressions? I have found all the organisations that I have visited so far have offered me a warm welcome – some have simply been curious about the implementation consultants’ role and what we have to offer – and others have had some very specific questions for me to answer. I have found myself doing everything from giving a formal presentation to an executive team, to sitting down and going through the costing tools for a clinical guideline.

Queries have ranged from local authorities struggling to work out how to distribute guidance to the right people, so that it is integrated into planning processes, to very specific questions about using guidance which differs from existing local practice.

There is a lot of interest in the costing tools, the commissioning guides and the audit criteria. In all of these cases, the welcome news is that the implementation team at NICE can prepare tools which save time and money at the front line, and which help to ensure a consistent approach to implementing the guidance across the country.

There have been some changes to our support team this month, and we will shortly be moving our office base in Manchester, so we have introduced a new way to contact the team. If you would like us to visit you, to talk about the range of implementation tools available, to help you to develop your implementation strategy, or for help with individual pieces of guidance, you can now email us at fieldteam@nice.org.uk . We would be happy to hear from you, and glad to do what we can to help.

Gill Mathews