Arthritis
(asked on 28th January 2015) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the level of uptake of care plans amongst people with arthritis; and what steps his Department plans to take to widen access to care planning.
On 8 January 2015, NHS England published the results from the latest GP Patient Survey. The survey provides information on over 880,000 patients’ overall experience of primary care services and their overall experience of accessing these services. The survey contains the questions, Do you have a written care plan?, and the following table provides the results from patients who identified themselves as having either arthritis or a long term joint problem or a long term back problem .
| Do you have a written care plan? | ||
Yes | No | Don’t Know | |
Of patients who have arthritis or a long-term joint problem | 5.6% | 90.8% | 3.6% |
Of patients who have a long-term back problem | 4.5% | 91.2% | 4.3% |
More information about the GP Survey can be found at the following link:
www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/2015/01/08/gp-patient-survey-2014/
The Government’s Mandate to NHS England makes clear that all patients with a long-term condition should be offered a personalised care plan. NHS England is developing resources to support practitioners and commissioners to introduce effective personalised care planning in their local areas, including the recently launched handbooks on personalised care and support planning, which can be found at the following link:
www.england.nhs.uk/resources/resources-for-ccgs/out-frwrk/dom-2/ltc-care/
NHS England is also working with GP practices to identify the 2% of their patient population most at risk of hospital admissions so care plans can be developed for them as the top priority.