by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
As the final draft of our report into the MSK health inequalities inquiry comes together, a few things have made me think about the importance of data.
First the good news. NHS England has published a statement on information on health inequalities. The Statement includes which information on health inequalities should be collected, analysed and published by NHS bodies in England. Sadly, it does not link to the conditions in the Major Conditions Strategy, so MSK is included only in the overall figures for elective care. However, there is a note about community services which is important for MSK.
Community MSK services are a vital part of almost all MSK pathways. It is therefore welcome that, without specifying exactly which indicators, the document notes that:
“All ICBs and providers should ensure they:
- are capturing and recording high quality health inequalities data about all NHS commissioned community health services
- have regard to community health services data in line with fulfilling statutory duties on health inequalities.”
Our inquiry report will show how some community MSK services have used data to identify communities not accessing services and developed interventions to explore and address this. If services and ICBs capture and have regard to such data, this will be a step forward in addressing avoidable health inequalities in MSK.
Potentially less positive is a consultation about proposals to change, or in some cases stop, publication of datasets which could be relevant to this work. Changing the ‘health state life expectancies by national deprivation deciles’ reporting from annual to biennial is a retrograde step if ICBs are to address inequalities in healthy life expectancy. There is a proposal to remove “lesser used indicators” from the MSK health local profiles. These are a vital source of information for local health systems and providers in understanding local population need. We should be ensuring that all indicators are well used. The ‘Musculoskeletal health: trends, risk factors and disparities in England’ report has been paused. Again, this is vital for the work of all those working in MSK who need to address inequalities and should be re-started.
There are also changes proposed in some of the datasets around drivers of MSK health, such as obesity, diet and physical activity.
If NHS England are serious about tackling health inequalities, and the Government is serious about implementing a major conditions strategy to address the main causes of work loss due to ill health, then we need to ensure we all have the best possible data to support improvement. We need to ensure that this consultation does not lead to a reduction in the data sources we all need in MSK.