Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
ARMA has submitted a response to the Government’s consultation on the NHS 10-Year Plan.
The submission was produced with ARMA members who gave their views in a series of meetings. The response calls for MSK conditions to have the long-overdue acknowledgment and equal footing alongside other long-term conditions and highlights the substantial impact that MSK conditions have on individuals’ lives, the NHS and the wider economy.
You can read ARMA’s submission here.
The Government has launched ‘Change NHS: help build a health service fit for the future’ to gather feedback to inform decision making on the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan for England.
Organisations are invited to share their responses to the consultation by 2 December via the online platform, change.nhs.uk.
Members of the public, as well as NHS staff and health experts are also invited to share their experiences, views and ideas for fixing the NHS, with the website remaining open for these responses until the start of next year.…
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Year of Care Partnerships® is promoting a series of free webinars this summer in which they will share learning across a range of topics including proactive care and shared decision making.
The series began on July 17 with a webinar about the systematic implementation of personalised care approaches for planned care, including examples of good practice and lessons for successful implementation.
Using the Year of Care approach to personalised care and support planning to deliver proactive care
Wednesday 14 August 1-2pm
This webinar will share learning and recommendations from the North East North Cumbria ICS proactive care pilot in primary care networks.…
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With numbers on the NHS waiting list at a record high of 7.75 million and rising, on the 30th of November 2023, ITV’s flagship current affairs programme ‘ITV Tonight’ focused on the huge waiting lists for joint replacement surgery: Tonight – Series 25 – Episode 35 – ITVX
With input from Versus Arthritis, Dr Zoe Williams investigates the health impacts on the estimated one million-plus people currently waiting, in some cases for years, for trauma and orthopaedic treatment. The programme looked behind those figures and into the lives of those waiting in pain for transformative orthopaedic treatment, explored whether surgery is the only option for patients in severe pain, and discussed how people can wait as well as possible whilst awaiting treatment.…
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The National Workforce Implementation Plan outlines a series of practical actions that will act as enablers to accelerate the ten-year Workforce Strategy published in 2020. The Plan highlights a number of actions that need to progress immediately to address some of the most urgent pressures within the NHS now. Plans for specific professions and services like nursing, dentistry, or pharmacy will be published over the next two years.
Read the National workforce implementation plan on the www.gov.wales website.
The number of people waiting for hospital treatment in England has hit a record high of 5.61 million, as the NHS struggles to clear the growing backlog of cases caused by COVID-19. In a BBC Panorama programme on 27 September, Victoria Derbyshire met some of those on the waiting list and heard about the profound effects it is having on their lives.
The NHS Confederation has published a briefing on Building back inclusively: Radical approaches to tackling the elective backlog.
There is evidence suggesting that waiting lists have grown more rapidly in more deprived areas during the pandemic. There are good reasons to believe that the current approach to elective care, whereby patients are treated in the order they present for care, exacerbates inequalities and worsens health outcomes. The briefing sets out a package of measures, including the politically uncomfortable step of proactively growing the waiting list to address this.…
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The launch of NHS England’s Best MSK Health programme gives the population’s musculoskeletal health in England a focus and priority like never before, and much needed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
NHS England waiting times data shows people with serious MSK conditions needing diagnosis and treatment by rheumatology and elective care services are waiting much longer. The same is true for community MSK services and treatment. At the other end of the spectrum, for people who previously had no long-term conditions, the lockdown effect on mental well-being, exercise and weight-gain are significant obstacles to their musculoskeletal health now and into the future.…
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NHS England has launched a new programme with the aim of sustaining the delivery of evidence-informed, personalised, high-quality integrated healthcare of value to all. This new initiative, part of the Pathways for Better Health Programme, significantly increases the resource to support MSK service delivery.
The programme covers the breadth of MSK including orthopaedics, rheumatology and pain, spanning primary secondary and community services. You can watch the launch event here.
The programme has ten workstreams, each led by a relevant clinical specialist:
There is the intention to ensure that the programme is coproduced involving the range of stakeholders including people with lived experience and patient organisations.…
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Policy Paper
Updated 11 February
The Government published a white paper, “Integration and innovation: Working together to improve health and social care for all” on 11 February 2021. This sets out proposals for changes in legislation with the aim of enabling integration within the NHS in England and between the NHS, local government and other health system partners. The proposals are grouped under four themes: working together and supporting integration; stripping out needless bureaucracy; enhancing public confidence and accountability; and additional proposals to support social care, public health, and quality and safety.…
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