David Amess – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Amess on 2015-11-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of implementation of the NICE quality standards for rheumatoid arthritis.
Jane Ellison
Quality standards (QS) are important in setting out to patients, the public, commissioners and providers what a high quality service should look like in a particular area of care. Whilst providers and commissioners must have regard to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) QS in planning and delivering services, however they are not mandatory.
The QS for rheumatoid arthritis states that services should be commissioned from and coordinated across all relevant agencies encompassing the rheumatoid arthritis care pathway. A person-centred approach to provision of services is fundamental to delivering high-quality care to adults with rheumatoid arthritis. NHS England continues to champion their use with providers and commissioners.
NHS England is working with patients, the pharmaceutical industry, royal colleges and others to encourage a range of improvements aimed at ensuring that all patients, including those with inflammatory arthritis, get the support they need to get the most from their medicines. The development of the four principles to support medicines optimisation offers a step change to the way we think about medicine use in the NHS. The four guiding patient-centred principles: aim to understand the patient’s experience; evidence-based choice of medicines; make medicines optimisation part of routine practice; ensure medicines use is as safe as possible are applicable to all patients, conditions and disease states.
The medicines optimisation best practice guidance, published in May 2014 is available at:
www.rpharms.com/promoting-pharmacy-pdfs/helping-patients-make-the-most-of-their-medicines.pdf.
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