Clinical practice guidance on Patient experience in generic terms is being developed for use in the NHS in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. An associated quality standard is being developed for use in the NHS in England. Registered stakeholders for this guidance and quality standard are invited to comment on the provisional recommendations and quality standard via this website. 

Individuals and organisations not registered as stakeholders are not able to comment, we recommend that you register as a stakeholder or you contact the registered stakeholder organisation that most closely represents your interests and pass your comments to them.

Please note that the provisional recommendations and quality standard presented here do not constitute the Institute's formal guidance on this topic. The recommendations and quality standard are provisional and may change after consultation.

Consultation dates: 21 June to 19 July 2011

Consultation documents

• Full version
• Appendices
• NICE version
• Quality Standard
• Comments proforma

The full version describes the evidence and views that have been considered, and sets out the provisional recommendations that have been developed.

The NICE version presents the provisional recommendations only with some brief supporting information.

The Quality Standard presents the provisional qualitative statements and quantitative measures with some brief supporting information.

Points to consider in the consultation

Full version

• Points or areas that are not covered, but which appear to fall within the scope of the guidance
• Potential inconsistencies or any disagreement with the Guidance Development Group’s interpretation of the evidence
• The practical value of the provisional recommendations.

NICE version

• Issues of style and format; for example, stakeholders may feel that the information could be made more readable and easy to follow.

Quality standard

• How clear the concept and definition of the quality standard is.
• How appropriate the statements of quality are.
• Whether the description of the quality statement is clear.
• Whether the quality statements are measurable.
• How easy it will be to collect data for the quality statements.
• Have we identified all appropriate healthcare outcomes for each individual quality statement?

In particular we are keen to seek your views on:

• Style and format. Could the information be easier to read and follow?
• Whether the quality statements adequately cover the three dimensions of quality: safety, effectiveness and experience.
• Any essential aspects of patient experience not addressed by the quality standard.
• Any new evidence or relevant research not considered by the Guidance Development Group that may affect the content of the quality standard
• How appropriate and accurate the qualitative statements and quantitative measures are.
• How much a high-quality service could reasonably be expected to achieve for each of the statements (we have assumed a 100% achievement level).
• How useful any of the existing indicators referred to in the quality standard are, and any gaps in the measures included.
• How suitable the explanation of what the statements mean for individual audiences is.

General

• Do you think this guidance could be changed to better promote equality of opportunity relating to age, disability, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion and belief, sexual orientation or socio-economic status?

In answering this question, please include details of:

• Which particular parts of the guidance you think affect equality of opportunity.
• Why and how you think equality of opportunity is affected.

How to submit your comments

Please provide all responses to the draft guidance and quality standard documents using the comments proforma (ensuring all relevant fields are completed, including your organisation’s full name) and forward this electronically by 5pm on 19 July 2011 at the very latest to this email address:  PatientExpGeneric@nice.org.uk   

The Institute is unable to accept

• Comments from non-registered organisations – if you wish your comments to be considered please register via the NICE website
• Comments from individuals – please contact the registered stakeholder organisation that most closely represents your interests and pass your comments to them.
• Comments received after the consultation deadline (5pm)
• Comments that are not on the correct proforma
• More than one response per stakeholder organisation
• Confidential information or other material that you would not wish to be made public
• Personal medical information about yourself or another person from which your or the person’s identity could be ascertained.

What will happen to your comments

• All eligible comments  will be sent to the developers at the end of the consultation
• Comments from registered stakeholders and nominated expert reviewers ONLY will be formally responded to by the developers and posted on the NICE website at the time of the pre-publication check.
• No action will be taken upon receipt of personal, individual comments, comments from non-registered organisations and late comments.
• PLEASE NOTE: The Institute reserves the right to summarise and edit comments received during consultations, or not to publish them at all, where in the reasonable opinion of the Institute, the comments are voluminous, publication would be unlawful or publication would be otherwise inappropriate.

Acknowledgement of comments

You should receive an automated acknowledgement from the email box when you email your comments.  If you do not receive this acknowledgement, please contact Nick Staples (nick.staples@nice.org.uk) to ensure your comments have been safely received.

Comments received in the course of consultations carried out by the Institute are published in the interests of openness and transparency, and to promote understanding of how recommendations are developed. The comments are published as a record of the submissions that the Institute has received, and are not endorsed by the Institute, its officers or advisory committees.

Endorsing NICE Quality Standards

If you would like your organisation to endorse the patient experience in generic terms quality standard please email PatientExpGeneric@nice.org.uk to express an interest. NICE is proud to jointly badge quality standards to help to achieve maximum dissemination among relevant audiences.

Those who endorse quality standards must be:

• National patient or carer organisations who represent the interests of people whose care is covered by the quality standard
• National organisations that represent the healthcare professionals who provide the services described in the quality standard
• Statutory organisations

[As quality standards are produced for the NHS in England, a 'national' organisation would be defined as one whose membership is drawn at least from the whole of England, but could be wider (e.g. England and  Wales or whole UK).]

Anticipated publication date: October 2011