Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
In early March the Council of Osteopathic Educational Institutions (COEI) exhibited at the prestigious Upper Waiting Hall at the House of Commons. Gaining access to such an influential audience in an election year is a unique opportunity to focus on the future of MSK Health and osteopathy’s role in providing local community MSK care.
For more information visit the COEI website.
by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
The majority of people with an MSK condition will rarely, if ever, need secondary care for that condition. All of them will need primary and community care. This is where people access MSK rehab, self-management support and a wide variety of treatment. Yet the main focus of the NHS remains hospitals. It’s what politicians talk about, what the media covers and where the majority of the attention of local systems focuses.
The King’s Fund has just published a report, Making Care Closer to Home a Reality, outlining why this problem occurs and some possible solutions.…
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The Royal Osteoporosis Society is continuing its Better Bones campaign with the Sunday Express for universal, quality Fracture Liaison Services. In the lead up to the Budget, ROS would greatly appreciate it if you were able to raise the campaign and its aims in any meetings you have with Parliamentarians or officials and post on social media about the campaign.
The Society remains committed to achieving the Better Bones campaign’s goals. The Better Bones campaign is calling for:
In what is very likely to be an election year, National Voices have shared their Manifesto for Equitable Healthcare – which puts forth three general election priorities.
Co-produced with National Voices’ members, the manifesto is supported by a common theme – ensuring that the NHS works for all, not just those who know how to navigate the system or who come from more privileged backgrounds.
The manifesto seeks to remind politicians that adopting these priorities will not just improve things for patients but will also help drive NHS stability and wider economic benefits.…
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As the conversation grows around health inequalities, we wanted to highlight three recent resources.
This King’s Fund podcast episode from 29th November explores how the NHS waiting list for elective care can be better managed to improve health equity. A really interesting discussion of the ethics, impact on patients and healthcare professionals, policy decisions and controversies around how waiting lists are managed and prioritised.
Ruth Roberston invites Dr Mark Ratnarajah, UK Managing Director at C2-Ai, Sharon Brennan, Director of Policy and External Affairs at National Voices and Dr Polly Mitchell, Post Doctoral Research Fellow in Bioethics and Public Policy at King’s College London to share their expertise. …
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NHS England has published Musculoskeletal orthopaedic approach to referral optimisation, a guidance document developed by the Outpatient Recovery and Transformation Programme (OPRT) and BestMSK Health Collaborative.
This guidance describes the benefits of referral optimisation in adult services managing musculoskeletal conditions, focusing on the use of specialist advice to enable people to be seen by the right person, at the right time and in the right place.
It makes the case for change to sustain high quality care, manage risk and optimise capacity across primary, community and secondary care MSK services.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
A few days ago the Chief Medical officer, Chris Whitty, published his report for 2023 entitled health in an ageing society. I’m sure many of you will immediately seek out the MSK related content, skimming straight to the section on early diagnosis of osteoporosis or the case studies on ESCAPE-pain and MSK hubs. However, those are not the bits I think are most important for us.
The big take away message for me is the section on multi-morbidity.…
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The quality statement describes what good quality musculoskeletal health services should look like.
First published: 12 October 2023
Last updated: 12 October 2023
The Wales MSK Conference took place in Cardiff on World Arthritis Day, 12 October 2023. ARMA CEO Sue Brown presented alongside the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Frank Atherton and the Health Minister, Eluned Morganon.
The Minister and the CMO delivered speeches covering the scale of the challenge in terms of the number of people living with MSK in Wales – nearly a million – as well as the impact of the conditions on quality of life; both spoke about the importance of primary and secondary prevention regarding MSK.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I have just finished facilitating one of our regional meetings bringing together stakeholders to talk about what’s happening at the local level with MSK services. It’s clear there is a lot of willingness to do something, despite a lot of confusion around who leads on MSK at an ICS level. A lot of questions were asked at the meeting. Where are the MSK targets being reported? Are the ICBs aware of what’s happening? We’ve got a case to introduce a Fracture Liaison Service, but how do we get anyone to listen?…
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The government has announced ambitious plans to get an additional 3.5 million people physically active by 2030. The announcement was accompanied by the publication of a report, Get Active: A strategy for the future of sport and physical activity, which featured MSK Hubs as a case study of how sport and physical activity can help people ‘live healthier, longer and happier lives’.
The MSK Hubs programme recently secured £1.4m of funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as part of the Healthy Ageing Challenge to investigate how to transform leisure facilities into musculoskeletal (MSK) hubs which can be accessed in every community.…
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