So who has not yet looked at the National Institute for Clinical Excellence web site? True, much of it is currently taken up with expressions of intent ('Here you will eventually be able to find out about...'), but at least the bare bones seem to be there - which is about all you can say about NICE so far.

Some guide to what those bones may look like once fully fleshed out might, perhaps, be found within 'the NICE umbrella', which offers a guide to all those organisations currently receiving core clinical audit funding along with those being taken over by the new body and the members of its partners' council.

Some, including sites run by the National Centre for Clinical Audit and the four royal college-hosted sites for national confidential enquiries into suicide and infant, maternal and peri-operative deaths, already contain some of the information which may make its way to NICE in future.

Others, such as the College of Health, are frustratingly bereft of substance, while the Patients Association and Carers National Association inevitably focus on explanations of their own role and policy stance. And at least one link from NICE to a 'partner' appears already dead.

But of course, the Commission for Health Improvement is the one that should have the really interesting web site.

That's 'interesting' as in the Chinese curse wishing one's enemies interesting times, you understand. But we will just have to wait for the Health Bill to become law for that one.

In the meantime, you will simply have to make do with the NHS Performance Assessment Framework and its 41 high-level indicators, the full text of which can be downloaded from the Department of Health's web site.

It is all intended to ensure 'a more rounded assessment'. There'll be blood on the carpets.