NICE: 2000/011
Issued: 20 April 2000
PRESS STATEMENT
REFERRAL PROTOCOLS
Update you on the progress of NICE's referral project.
- This project has been retiled - Referral Advice
- The steering group met on Tuesday 18th April and its conclusions accepted by the full NICE board at its public meeting on the 19th April.
- Eleven subject areas have been signed off.
- The referral advice on dyspepsia has been postponed until after the Institute has published the results of its technology appraisal of PPIs. and may feed into the guidelines work programme
There has been some further thinking on the dissemination strategy that can be summarised as follows:
The full document and Referral Advice will be available on NICE's web site after Easter sometime during the middle of May.
NICE has been in discussion with the National Research and Development Programme (London Regional Office - Organisation and Management of Health Service Committee, chaired by Professor Trevor Sheldon) and Dr Paul Zollinger-Read of the National Patient Access Team.
This has resulted in the design of a coordinated series of evaluated pilots throughout England and Wales. The details will be available in May but the timescales will be such that the pilot geographical areas will receive the hard copy documents in June.
An interim evaluation report will be available after 6 months with a final report at one year. The revised documents will be launched to the rest of the NHS during Autumn 2000.
A letter informing all relevant NHS personnel of this process will go out in May at the time the document is put on the website.
After much deliberation the name of the booklet will be "Referral Practice - a guide to appropriate referral from general to specialist services " and the "cues" are now "advice".
Anne-Toni Rodgers
Communications Director
