Guide · checked October 2026

NICE and HQIP clinical audit guidance: what to read

For local clinical audit in England, the core reading is HQIP's Best practice in clinical audit and its reporting guide (both April 2020), NICE's 2002 Principles for best practice in clinical audit, and the NICE baseline assessment tool for the guideline you are auditing against.

HQIP

Best practice in clinical audit (April 2020): the definition, the four stages, governance and data rules. Its stated review date (April 2023) has passed and we found no newer edition.
Documenting local clinical audit: a guide to reporting and recording (April 2020): a report template, action plans, RAG ratings and record keeping.
Guide to ensuring data quality in clinical audits: proforma design and data collection instructions. Its review date has also passed.
A guide for clinical audit, research and service review (revised 2011): telling the three apart.

NICE

NICE still hosts Principles for best practice in clinical audit (2002), which describes audit as a cycle or spiral and covers criteria, levels of performance and re-audit. It is older than the HQIP material, so read it for method rather than current policy.

For a specific guideline, NICE publishes a baseline assessment tool under Tools and resources, in the Audit and service improvement section. NICE describes it as an Excel spreadsheet that organisations use to check whether they are in line with the recommendations and to plan how to meet them, and says it does not replace the guidance itself. For quality standards there is a service improvement template. NICE's practical guide to implementing guidance points to these tools and to HQIP's directory of national audits aligned with NICE guidelines.

NHS England

NHS England published Clinical audits and registries: a best practice guide in January 2026, covering national audits and registries and how they are used for improvement.

What these documents are not

Not a legal duty in themselves: the duties come from contracts, regulation and, for radiation, IR(ME)R.
Not interchangeable with the guideline: a baseline assessment tool does not replace the NICE recommendations.
Not all current: several HQIP guides are past their stated review dates.

Where Oriel fits

Oriel answers questions about your own guidance documents with citations to the section and page. Upload the Trust's procedures or a guideline PDF and ask what it says about a topic; the answer points to the clause it came from. Guidance is approved by governance before audits can cite it.

Oriel does not replace reading the guidance, and it does not bundle NICE or HQIP documents. It is a pilot shown on synthetic data.

Questions

Is NICE's 2002 audit guide still valid?

NICE still hosts it and its method is widely used, but it predates HQIP's 2020 guides, which are the more recent reference for local audit.

What is a NICE baseline assessment tool?

An Excel spreadsheet, published with a guideline, that organisations use to check whether they are in line with the recommendations and to plan how to meet them.

Sources

Official pages, checked October 2026. Guidance changes, so check the current version before you rely on it.

General information for healthcare managers and clinical teams, checked October 2026. It is not legal, regulatory or clinical advice; follow the current official guidance and your organisation's own policies. No patient data is used in these examples. Oriel is a working prototype shown on a fictional demo hospital with synthetic data only. It is not a medical device and is not for clinical use. It drafts and flags for people to decide; it does not diagnose or change clinical records. A clinical safety case and information-governance approval come before any use with real patient data. Oriel is a working name.