Clinical effectiveness aims to ensure that healthcare practice is based on the best available data and evidence of effectiveness. Information is gathered from national and international research and audit to identify what practices are safe, effective and efficient. This includes both clinical and cost effectiveness data. Clinical effectiveness activities bring this information together to draw conclusions that help healthcare practitioners and their patients to make decisions about what is best for the Irish healthcare system and its individual users. The integration of best evidence in service provision, through clinical effectiveness processes, promotes healthcare that is up to date, effective and consistent.
Clinical effectiveness processes include guidelines, audit and practice guidance. Ireland is developing Clinical Effectiveness through the National Clinical Effectiveness Committee (NCEC) that the Minister of Health set up in 2010. Access more information about the NCEC.
The role of the NCEC is to recommend guidelines and audit to the Minister for Health to become NCEC National Clinical Guidelines and NCEC National Clinical Audit for implementation in Irish healthcare.
It does this by:
- prioritising clinical guidelines and clinical audit that are important to national policy and the Irish health system
- assessing clinical guidelines and clinical audit against criteria to judge that they have been developed in the best possible way. This assures that NCEC National Clinical Guidelines and NCEC National Clinical Audit are based on best available evidence, have involved key people, including patients, in their development and have examined the cost involved in implementation
This means that all NCEC National Clinical Guidelines and NCEC National Clinical Audit include an implementation plan (the how of implementation) and a budget impact analysis (the cost of implementation).
Clinical guidelines and clinical audit that successfully go through these steps are recommended to the Minister for Health through the Chief Medical Officer for endorsement and publications as NCEC National Clinical Guidelines or NCEC National Clinical Audit.
NCEC National Clinical Guidelines are defined as:
“systematically developed statements, based on a thorough evaluation of the evidence, to assist practitioner and service users’ decisions about appropriate healthcare for specific clinical circumstances across the entire clinical system."
The implementation of clinical guidelines can improve health outcomes for patients, reduce variation in practice and improve the quality of clinical decisions that patients and healthcare staff have to make. NCEC National Clinical Guidelines informs patients about the care they should be receiving and assist them to make healthcare choices based on best available information.
NCEC National Clinical Audit is defined as:
“a cyclical process that aims to improve patient care and outcomes by systematic, structured review and evaluation of clinical care against explicit clinical standards conducted on a national basis."
Clinical audit is an internationally recognised process that requires action to be taken where the audit identifies quality improvement is necessary."
The results of NCEC National Clinical Audits can inform patients of the structures, process and outcomes of healthcare and show them where improvement are being made.
The NCEC Standards for Clinical Practice Guidance were published in 2015 with the aim of providing standards for healthcare staff developing evidence-based clinical practice guidance for health care. Clinical practice guidance is defined as systematically developed statements or processes to assist clinician and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances, with the type of clinical practice guidance determined by evidence-based criteria and clinical requirements. Such clinical guidance includes clinical policies, procedures, protocols and guidelines. Care pathways, clinical decision aids/tools, care bundles, flowcharts, checklists and algorithms can form components of policies, procedures, protocols or guidelines.
