During the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a need to expeditiously develop clinical policies, both for commissioned specialized services as well as for the NHS more broadly.
We have developed a process to produce rapid clinical policies during the pandemic, a process that is a highly compressed version of the standard process used outside of emergencies. A rapid clinical policy statement is the end result of the expedited process, a document that defines access to a treatment for a particular group of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic or provides clinical policy guidance more broadly. All such rapidly developed policies and statements are interim for the COVID-19 period and will reviewed when the pandemic is over, with options thereafter including withdrawal, entering the full NHS policy development process, or entering the NICE Technology Appraisal Guideline process with appropriate follow-through action.