The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) sets standards of clinical practice in the UK. An extensive update on guidance regarding bipolar disorder was released in September 2014. Practitioners face the challenge of translating this guidance into practice. NICE suggests that interventions might be better delivered by bipolar specialist clinics. Updated NICE standards were integrated into a Bipolar Clinical Effective Practice Screen (BICEPS), allowing existing community psychiatric teams to deliver these revised clinical standards in bipolar care.

To assess the effectiveness of the BICEPS in delivering interventions aligned with NICE clinical standards.

Three psychiatric community teams were audited; two teams (1 and 2) used the BICEPS to support their interventions whilst a third team provided management as usual. Team 1 was previously familiarized with the concept.

Table 1.

The teams using BICEPS show better concordance to NICE standards. Superior outcomes by the team previously acquainted with the concept suggest longer-term benefits and adaptability. Using BICEPS may offer a cheaper alternative to developing specialist clinics.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.