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Norfolk & Norwich Hospital shows the
way on Rheumatoid Arthritis care |
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As rheumatoid arthritis is a complex, progressive condition, effective treatment and management requires access to a variety of healthcare professionals |
Commenting on the publication of the National Audit Office report into services for people with rheumatoid arthritis, South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon, a member of the Commons public accounts committee, said:
“Rheumatoid arthritis is an incurable autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the tissue within the joint, leaving it painful and inflamed”. |
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“Rheumatoid arthritis is a complex condition and effective treatment depends upon patients receiving multidisciplinary care from a variety of healthcare professionals. NICE guidelines recommend that a named member of a multidisciplinary team should coordinate patient care with various services, such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy and orthopaedics”. “Norfolk has been benefiting from exactly this sort of joined-up approach for 20 years and this report holds up the work of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals Foundation Trust as an exemplar of multidisciplinary care”. “However, this is not the case everywhere. This report finds that there is a lack of coordinated multidisciplinary services, meaning many people with rheumatoid arthritis do not get the joined-up care they should receive. The government needs to make sure that diagnoses of rheumatoid arthritis are made promptly and that sufferers get rapid access to holistic care from a well-integrated multidisciplinary team”. Mr Bacon was speaking as the National Audit Office (NAO) published its report into services for people with rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis costs the NHS an estimated £560 million annually and the NAO estimates that approximately 580,000 adults in England currently have the disease with a further 26,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The report finds that too many people with rheumatoid arthritis are not being diagnosed or treated quickly enough, and some services for people with the disease are not coordinated enough. As rheumatoid arthritis is a complex progressive condition, effective treatment and management requires access to a variety of healthcare professionals. NICE guidelines on the management of rheumatoid arthritis in adults recommend that multidisciplinary care should include access to a named member of a multidisciplinary team with responsibility for coordinating care with specialist services including physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry, orthotics and psychological services. However, some trusts face barriers which prevent the effective working of the multidisciplinary team, including a lack of capacity in the relevant service and waiting lists to access services. Other key barriers included a lack of specialist knowledge about rheumatoid arthritis amongst the multidisciplinary team, and a lack of links between rheumatology and other departments. The Norfolk and Norwich university Hospitals Foundation Trust runs services for 6,100 people with rheumatoid arthritis from its central hospital and from local GP settings. It identified the importance of co-location at its hospital site to encourage joint working and strong links between rheumatology, orthopaedics, physiotherapy, radiology and occupational therapy departments. This approach to multidisciplinary care has been in place for 20 years. Specialist nurses coordinate integrated care between hospital departments and GPs in the community. Nurse practitioners facilitate GPs working closely with secondary care by running clinics in primary care surgeries, and answering further GP queries on a telephone helpline. |
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| © Richard Bacon 2010 | ||||||||
NAO REPORT: