
an Economist Intelligence Unit business healthcare
The Royal College of Surgeons of England
The Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS) is a professional membership organisation (and registered charity), supporting 20,000 members in the UK and internationally. It runs exams and courses to improve the skills and knowledge of members, produces policy and guidance to ensure best practice, and runs an innovative research programme to improve surgical care.
The RCS, working with the Surgical Specialty Associations (SSAs) led on producing a commissioning guidelines portfolio to enhance the delivery of surgical care within patient pathways.
The aim of the programme was to increase the value that individual patients and the population as a whole derive from care and treatment. The initial work was funded by NHS Right Care.
Unexplained variation in practice was identified as an area where commissioners could potentially improve quality and increase value. The RCS and SSAs aimed to create guidance to help to address variation and provide detailed evidence for high value or low value procedures in 10 key speciality areas to inform commissioners’ decision-making.
The client required a literature search process that would fit in to a wider guideline development process. Bazian designed a process comprising topic scoping (with feedback), literature searching, filtering and categorising of results. The process had to be rigorous and fit-for-purpose, balancing the client’s need for high quality searching with the rapid turnaround required. Gaining NICE accreditation was a key aim for the client, therefore we designed a process that would meet the relevant domains of NICE’s accreditation standards for guideline development.
Bazian provided additional ad-hoc support in the form of critical appraisal, producing graded evidence tables and writing a methods section for a sample guideline. This work was undertaken to support the client in their NICE accreditation submission following NICE’s initial feedback.