Table 2.

Characteristics of the five NHS regulators created by the British government between April 1999 and April 2001

Name	Who it regulates	Date established	Annual budget (£)	Mission or purpose	How it works	What it is
National Institute for Clinical Excellence (www.nice.org.uk)	NHS in England and Wales	Apr 1999	10.6m (2001-2002)	To provide patients, health professionals, and the public with authoritative, robust, and reliable guidance on current “best practice”	Uses teams of experts to review health technologies and interventions and produce guidance which is then disseminated	A special health authority, set up by statutory instrument (SI 1999 Nos 220 and 2219)
Commission for Health Improvement (www.chi.nhs.uk)	NHS in England and Wales	Nov 1999	24.5m (2001-2002)	To help improve the quality of patient care by assisting the NHS in addressing unacceptable variations and to ensure a consistently high standard of patient care	Undertakes clinical governance reviews of all NHS organisations every 4 years; monitors implementation of guidelines from NICE, national service frameworks, etc; investigates major system failures within the NHS	A non-departmental public body established by the Health Act 1999
Modernisation Agency (www.modernnhs.nhs.uk)	NHS in England	Apr 2001	54.6m (2001-2002)	To help the NHS bring about improvements in services for patients and contribute to national planning and performance improvement strategies	Encompasses existing national patient action team; primary care development team; collaboratives programme; leadership centre; beacon programme; and clinical governance support unit	Part of the Department of Health
National Patient Safety Agency (www.npsa.org.uk)	NHS in England (at present)	Jul 2001	15m (2002-2003)	To collect and analyse information on adverse events in the NHS, assimilate safety information from elsewhere, learn lessons and feed back to the NHS, produce solutions, set national goals and establish mechanisms to track progress	Will establish and operate a new, mandatory national system for reporting adverse events and “near misses,” and provide national leadership and guidance on patient safety and adverse events	A special health authority set up by statutory instrument (SI 2001 No 1743)
National Clinical Assessment Authority (www.ncaa.nhs.uk)	NHS in England (at present)	Apr 2001	10.1m (2002-2003)	To provide a support service to health authorities and hospital and community trusts who are faced with concerns over the performance of an individual doctor	Deals with concerns about doctors in difficulty by providing advice, taking referrals and carrying out targeted assessments where necessary	A special health authority set up by statutory instrument (SI 2000 No 2961)