Health Policy | ARMA

Guest Blog: Getting it Right First Time

by Mike Kimmons CB, Chief Executive, British Orthopaedic Association

On Monday 16 March, the BOA launched the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) report. GIRFT was commissioned in 2013 by the Secretary of State for Health and NHS England and published with their agreement. Evidence-based and solutions-oriented, the GIRFT team used multiple sources to compile a unique data set for each NHS Hospital Trust in England that provides elective orthopaedic services and constructed comparative performance dashboards with the objective of benchmarking good practice.

…

Read more of this article

Guest Blog: The Need for Competency-Based Commissioning

by Matthew Bennett, President, British Chiropractic Association

As we all know back pain is the single biggest cause of disability in the UK according to the Global Burden of Disease Report. Despite this huge cost both in human and financial terms, care can often appear to be disjointed. In 2009 NICE published guidelines on the Management of persistent non-specific low back pain but many regions in the UK still struggle to implement the guidance and with many different providers being involved in the management of back pain an integrated approach is elusive.

…

Read more of this article

Guest Blog: Musings from Primary Care

by Dr. Alan Nye, President Primary Care Rheumatology Society, Executive Director, Pennine MSK Partnership Ltd.

This is my final month as President of the Primary Care Rheumatology Society and it’s been a very interesting 2 years for me. I apologise that this blog is England-centric, but England is the totality of my NHS experience and I cannot write about areas outside of my experience. I would like to cover, albeit briefly, three areas that over the past few years have become very dear to my heart:

MSK training for primary care
MSK networks and commissioning MSK services
Shared decision-making

For a long time the lack of training for front line GPs has been a real issue for the NHS.…

Read more of this article

Guest Blog – Collaboration and Genuine Innovation

by Maurice Cheng, Chief Executive of The Institute of Osteopathy I’m sitting here on a Sunday morning writing this blog post, having missed the deadline, wondering what I could reflect on that would be interesting for ARMA colleagues. The reason I’m late with this is because we’ve just relaunched the British Osteopathic Association as the Institute of Osteopathy; finally got our phase one new website and branding up this week (dead links, typos and all); finalised our annual convention programme in October and embedded it on an event microsite; published a new format members’ journal; and signed off on an extraordinarily long career and lifestyle census questionnaire for osteopathic practitioners – all in the same week.…

Read more of this article

Guest Blog – On being a bit short for your weight

by Judi Rhys, Chief Executive of Arthritis Care I recently attended a plenary session at the European Federation of National Associations of Orthopaedics and Traumatology Congress. The presentations were concerned with the ‘global musculoskeletal challenge’ and the ‘imminent avalanche of demand’ ahead. Many of the speakers referred to the rise in worldwide obesity and the link between obesity and osteoarthritis. A review of research in this area suggests an obese person is 14 times more likely to develop knee osteoarthritis, compared with a person of normal weight.…

Read more of this article

Guest Blog: Debbie Cook – December 2013

Musculoskeletal conference – the patient story

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance’s MSK2013 conference about the patient experience.

I was honoured to be asked, to be given the opportunity of talking to commissioners, Healthcare professionals and other patient group representatives. I shared the patient journey slot with Jo from Arthritis Care.

I presented the highlights, key messages from our recent patient survey. It was great to have data representing the journey and opinions from 1630 people with a diagnosis of AS.…

Read more of this article