During the COVID-19 pandemic there was a need to expeditiously develop clinical policies, both for commissioned specialised services as well as for the NHS more broadly.
We developed a process to produce rapid clinical policies during the pandemic, a process that was a significantly compressed version of the standard process used outside of emergencies. A rapid clinical policy statement was the end result of the process, a document that defined access to a treatment for a particular group of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic or provided clinical policy guidance more broadly.
All such rapidly developed policies and statements were interim for the COVID-19 period and the majority have now entered National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) processes, including the Technology Appraisal route and COVID-19 rapid guideline route.