Benefits of implementation
Implementing NICE guidelines offers benefits to patients and carers, healthcare professionals and organisations.
NICE guidance can help patients and carers
- Receive care in line with the best available evidence of clinical and cost-effectiveness
- Empower patients to be accountable for their care, knowing how they will be cared for in a consistent evidence-based approach, thus building patients confidence in NHS services
- Improve their own health and prevent disease.
- Help put NICE guidance into practice.
NICE guidance can help healthcare professionals
- Ensure care provided is based on the best evidence available
- Ensure clinicians meet the standards set by regulatory bodies and that they consider NICE guidance when exercising their clinical judgement
- Enable all staff dealing with patient queries to have confidence in the approaches to care
- Effectively target resources and efforts at the areas that offer the most significant health improvement.
NICE guidance can help organisations
- Meet the NHSLA risk management standards and benefit from reduced claims and risk management premiums
- Enable organisations to meet the requirements in the NHS operating framework for England for 2010/11
- Benefit from any identified disinvestment opportunities, cost savings or opportunities for re-directing resources
- Meet government indicators and targets for health improvement and reducing health inequalities.
- Help local government fulfil its remit to promote the economic and social well-being of its communities.
- Provide a focus for multi-sector partnership working on health.
Accessing treatment recommended by NICE
- NICE are working with the Care Quality Commission to ensure that their new monitoring processes and systems take account of NICE guidance. We will publish further information here when it is available. In the meantime, if you think a treatment that has been recommended by NICE is suitable for you please talk to a member of your healthcare team.
When NICE has not reviewed a treatment
The National Prescribing Centre (NPC) provides resources that health communities need to aid local decision making processes and to ensure consistent and equitable management of funding requests. These resources are useful when NICE is not reviewing a medicine or treatment, or is still in the process of publishing its decision.
Further documents
- Using NICE guidance to promote health and wellbeing - for people working with local communities
- Involving patients and the public in implementing NICE guidance
- Patient and public activities to support the use of NICE guidance
This page was last updated: 30 March 2011
