<p> ON MARCH 30, the Department of Health (DoH) published the last four reports of the Clinical Standards Advisory Group. The reports deal with standards of clinical care in four areas: pain management, depression, epilepsy and hospital outpatient services. This report describes the background to the study on outpatient services, discusses how the research team tried to develop a focused and systematic approach to data collection in what seemed a diffuse and complex area of NHS activity, and highlights some of the issues in the final report.</p>