NICE process and methods

4 Stakeholder involvement

4 Stakeholder involvement

4.1 How stakeholders are involved

NICE quality standards are developed involving stakeholders who contribute through consultation. Stakeholders include national patient, service user and carer groups and voluntary organisations, healthcare professional and academic organisations, and commercial organisations. Stakeholders may also include 'respondents' who are tobacco companies with an interest in a particular quality standard topic. They can register to comment on the topic engagement and the draft quality standard and their comments are made public with those of other registered stakeholders. The term 'respondent' acknowledges NICE's commitment to Article 5.3 of the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This sets out an obligation to protect the development of public health policy from any vested interests of the tobacco industry.

When registering and commenting on the topic overview and draft quality standard, stakeholders are asked to disclose whether their organisation has any direct or indirect links to, or receives or has ever received funding from, the tobacco industry. NICE will still carefully consider all consultation responses from the tobacco industry and from those with links to the industry. Disclosures will be included with the published consultation responses and within presentations to the committee.

The following methods are used to ensure the appropriate stakeholders are involved in the development of each quality standard:

  • The organisations registered as stakeholders for the NICE guidance on which the quality standard is based are automatically registered as stakeholders for the quality standard.

  • The list of organisations registered as stakeholders for the NICE-accredited guidance on which the quality standard is based is used to identify potential stakeholders. The NICE quality standards team invites these organisations to register as stakeholders.

  • The registered stakeholder list for each quality standard is reviewed and, if there are any omissions, relevant organisations are encouraged to register as stakeholders. This review is performed by the NICE quality standards team, the QSAC chair and QSAC members, with the support of other NICE teams such as the Public Involvement Programme and implementation teams.

Stakeholders are invited to submit published current practice information based on the topic overview and consultation comments on the draft quality standard when these documents are published on the NICE website (see section 3.1 and section 3.5). The following table summarises stakeholder involvement at the different stages of development.

Development stage Stakeholder involvement

Topic engagement

2-week period during which stakeholders are invited to submit comments on key areas for quality improvement (see section 3.1).

Stakeholders are invited to express interest in formally supporting the quality standard when the topic overview is published (see section 4.3).

Consultation

4-week period during which stakeholders are invited to submit general feedback and comments on individual quality statements. Stakeholders may also be invited to respond to specific questions about the quality standard (see section 3.5).

Stakeholders are also invited to express interest in formally supporting the quality standard during consultation (see section 4.3).

4.2 How NICE communicates with stakeholders

Stakeholders are provided with advance notice of the topic development schedule, including the dates of the topic engagement exercise and draft quality standard consultation phase. They are also kept updated throughout the quality standard development process and are notified by email and on the NICE website when a topic overview or a draft quality standard is available. Stakeholders are invited to submit comments on a form using a dedicated email address. The discussions regarding stakeholder comments and the associated decisions are summarised in the QSAC meeting minutes and all stakeholders that submitted comments are sent a link to the minutes on the NICE website when the quality standard publishes.

Stakeholder consultation comments on the draft quality standard are also published on the NICE website.

4.3 Formal support of quality standards

When the topic overview is published and again during the draft quality standard consultation phase, eligible stakeholders and respondents are invited to express interest in formally supporting the quality standard. The eligibility criteria are listed on the NICE website. Organisations that agree to formally support the quality standard undertake activities to increase awareness of the quality standard and encourage those commissioning, providing and using services to use it. This may include activities such as:

  • producing print or online articles for the organisation's website or newsletter

  • using the organisation's social media channels to promote the quality standard

  • using conferences and other speaking opportunities to present information on the quality standard

  • running workshops to help other organisations understand how using the quality standard can add value.

All supporting organisations are listed on the web page for the relevant quality standard along with a link to their website.