community health

GIRFT webinar: Delivering cMSK Community Appointment Days

If you were not able to join the GIRFT webinar on 10^th July 2025, you can now catch up by watching the recording online.

The session explores the progress of the GIRFT MSK community programme and focuses on the delivery of Community Appointment Days (CADs), a model of care designed to support people in managing their health through collaborative conversations rather than traditional consultations.

You’ll also hear from speakers sharing their real-world experiences of delivering CADs, along with valuable insights and lessons learned.…

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GIRFT webinar: Delivering cMSK Community Appointment Days

GIRFT invites you to join us for a webinar on 10^th July 2025, 12:30pm – 1:30pm to hear about the progress of the GIRFT MSK community programme and to discuss the delivery of Community Appointment Days (CADs).

The Community Appointment Days (CADs) initiative aims to introduce a new model of care supporting people to better manage their own health and determine appropriate next steps for treatment, placing greater emphasis on having conversations rather than traditional consultations.

We are delighted to be joined by Jean King, deputy director – health division, Joint Work and Health Directorate, who will reflect on her visit to a CAD in Cornwall.…

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A question of balance

by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA

Last month I joined about 200 others at a government consultation event for the Ten Year Health Plan. Patient organisations, voluntary sector and professional bodies came together to get updates from the consultation process so far and discuss questions arising from the vision groups’ work.

Around our tables we were asked to consider one of three questions about how the NHS can make the shift to working more in partnership – with patients, communities and the voluntary sector.…

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Introducing the GIRFT MSK community delivery programme

Dr Lesley Kay, NHS England National Clinical Director (NCD) for musculoskeletal (MSK), invites you to join our webinar on Thursday 6^th March at 12.30 – 13.30 to discuss the GIRFT MSK community delivery programme.

Register here

The GIRFT MSK community delivery programme, funded by the Government’s Joint Work and Health Directorate (JWHD), is working to better enable integrated care systems to commission the delivery of high quality MSK services in the community, which will benefit patients now and into the future.…

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Three horizons of MSK

by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA

I was reminded the other day of the three horizons model and thought how well this expresses the tensions we face in MSK. There is wide recognition that how we do things now doesn’t work for a whole host of reasons. It was this realisation that led Sussex MSK Partnership to try to do something radically different. They came up with community assessment days, which have excited a lot of people. While they experiment with this, they have had to continue delivering the service as it is currently arranged.…

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Of course we can

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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New paper shows impact and value of community-based MSK care

A paper evaluating the effectiveness of the ESCAPE-pain programme delivered in community centres – “Community‐based care for people with chronic knee and hip pain: Preliminary clinical outcomes and healthcare utilisation for ESCAPE‐pain” – shows the positive impact of the programme on levels of participant activity. Before the programme, only 24% of participants were classified as ‘fairly active/active’ (doing more than 30 minutes of activity per week); after the programme, 78% were classified as ‘fairly active/active’; 6 months later, 69% were still ‘fairly active/active’.…

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Musculoskeletal orthopaedic approach to referral optimisation

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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Community-Powered MSK: ARMA Annual Lecture 2023

More and more of us are living with long-term MSK conditions, putting increasing pressure on our already over-stretched NHS and local services. Is the current model unsustainable? And what does the future of MSK care look like?

These were questions explored in the well-attended 2023 ARMA Annual Lecture. We were delighted to welcome two leading experts in their fields, Adam Lent, Chief Executive of New Local, and Laura Finucane, Consultant Physiotherapist and Clinical Director of Sussex MSK Partnership, who shared their insights with a lively audience.…

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Join a chorus of local voices for MSK

Integrated Care Boards have been in place for almost a year now. Over that year, we have seen the profile and status of MSK health rising at a national level. It is difficult to tell if that profile is reflected at an ICB level. If not, then all the national profile in the world won’t make a difference to people with MSK conditions. That’s why ARMA is making local MSK services a priority with a new project, and we need you to get involved.…

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