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NICE guidance and quality standards can help ensure any new architecture for the NHS delivers and is held to account, according to its Chief Executive.

Speaking on Day 2 of the NICE Annual Conference, Sir Andrew Dillon told delegates that a fair healthcare system has to be clear as to what it is offering, and accountable as to whether it is delivering it.

“Much of what is being talked about in the system at the moment, particularly about the 5 Year Forward View, is excellent in its ambitions,” he said.

“Yet it speaks to the stewards in the system – those who are managing and running services – rather than the day-to-day consumers of services.”

He continued by commenting that NICE guidance is ideally placed to communicate what the system should offer to patients and service service users.

“Our guidance is the only national point of reference on what the system ought to be providing based on our understanding and knowledge of the evidence, and for what delivers good outcomes for the resources available. ” he said.

“Ordinary users of services need to be clear about what it is that they are going to be getting from the NHS. So we need to do more to consistently show how NICE's guidance and quality standards to communicate that offer.”

Ensuring the NHS is accountable

Sir Andrew added that once the system is clear about what it is offering, it needs to be accountable as to whether it achieves it. Here too, he believes, NICE products have a role.

“Through NICE's quality standards and its indicators that it has been developing there's the means for holding the NHS to account at a national level.”

He said they should be used by those with stewardship responsibilities “to understand whether the architecture they're putting in place is having an effect on the things that matter to us, as well as succeding in its own right”.

He concluded by saying that any new system should allow patients and service users hold those with local stewardship responsibilities to account for what they are providing.

He said: “If the NHS is not delivering what it offers, there needs to be a means for ordinary people to do something about that at a local level. Clarity is critically important, and local stewards need to be held to account.”