Geoffrey Cox – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Geoffrey Cox on 2016-02-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent discussions his Department has had with representatives from the health sector on the development of services to treat arthritis and musculoskeletal disorders.

Jane Ellison

The Department is in regular contact with stakeholders, such as Arthritis Research UK, and hosted a roundtable with them in November. The group is in the process of producing a toolkit for commissioners to support commissioning of physical activity interventions for people with musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions.

Whilst the Department has no plans to publish an arthritis action plan, NHS England and Public Health England are taking forward a number of projects.

Specifically on MSK conditions, the National Health Service National Clinical Director for MSK, Peter Kay, has been working in partnership with the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance, to develop new MSK clinical networks across England to build consensus on the way forward for models of care. In addition, in February 2015, Public Health England, in partnership with NHS England and the Department, ran a local pilot campaign to raise public awareness of the signs and symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis in Nottingham City and Hardwick Clinical Commissioning Group. The aim of the campaign was to support earlier diagnosis and thereby enable treatment to begin earlier to improve the quality of life for people with the condition. The results of the campaign are currently being evaluated.