How we made the decision

NICE is committed to keeping guidelines current. A check of the need to update a guideline (surveillance review) is undertaken by NICE on a regular basis. This seeks to identify recommendations that are no longer current or need to be revised. Given the number of published guidelines that make up NICE's guideline topics, the number of checks needed is considerable. To address this, adaptive processes and methods are used for checking that published guidelines are current.

We based the decision on surveillance 4 years after the publication of service user experience in adult mental health (2011) NICE guideline CG136. For this guideline, Cochrane reviews that were used to inform the recommendations during development were checked to determine whether they had undergone an update. The results presented in any updated Cochrane reviews were checked against the guideline recommendations to assess any potential impact. This evidence was considered alongside evidence identified for the 2014 evidence update on NICE guideline CG136. Furthermore, we checked the status of any legislation or policy documents that had been used to inform the guideline recommendations to determine whether these had been updated.

The above approach was taken due to nature of the guideline. This guideline is directed to generic service user experience in adult mental health settings and provides a framework that describes the key requirements for providing a high quality service user experience within adult mental health services. As a result, development of recommendations took into account:

  • Existing NICE recommendations related to service user experience

  • Selected systematic literature reviews for specific interventions that may improve service user experience

  • Guideline committee consensus

A targeted call for evidence was carried out during consultation on the no update proposal to supplement the surveillance review and ensure that we capture the issues important to people affected by the guideline.

For full details of the process and update decisions that are available, see ensuring that published guidelines are current and accurate in 'Developing NICE guidelines: the manual'.

Previous surveillance update decisions for the guideline are on our website.

New evidence

This surveillance report provides an overview of 16 studies published since the end of the search period for the guideline (1 April 2011).

See appendix A: summary of new evidence from surveillance and references for all new evidence considered.

Views of topic experts

We considered the views of topic experts, including those who helped to develop the guideline and other correspondence we have received since the publication of the guideline.

Views of stakeholders

Stakeholders commented on the decision not to update the guideline. See appendix B for stakeholders' comments and our responses.

Two stakeholders provided comments during consultation, one did not have any comments and the second disagreed with the decision not to update the guideline. The stakeholder who did not agree highlighted evidence from a recent NHS England engagement exercise on veterans and mental health services. This evidence supports current recommendations and therefore does not impact the guideline. The stakeholder also raised the recommendations on assessment should also include about assessment in primary care. Recommendation 1.3.8 in the guideline states the service users should be informed of the right to have a formal community care assessment. The scope of the current guideline is community and inpatient mental health settings, the surveillance review and call for evidence did not identify published evidence in assessment in primary care to suggest an extension to scope is required

See ensuring that published guidelines are current and accurate in 'Developing NICE guidelines: the manual' for more details on our consultation processes.

NICE Surveillance programme project team

Sarah Willett
Associate Director

Philip Alderson
Consultant Clinical Adviser

Katrina Sparrow
Technical Adviser

The NICE project team would like to thank the topic experts who participated in the surveillance process.

ISBN: 978-1-4731-2197-3


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