The Practice and Development (P&D) Committee meeting, which has representatives from the NHS, private sector, education and research, tackled this challenging question.
We agreed that it was the role of the professional body to define what a quality physiotherapy service or intervention should look like.
Once the criteria are set, physiotherapists should measure their own performance to ensure that they meet, but ideally exceed, the standards.
For commissioners, there are clear criteria about what they should be looking for when commissioning services.
Taking on this piece of work will be challenging and perhaps controversial. Some of our members may not yet reach the standard. But as a professional body, if we don’t define quality who will?
Already we have been provided with examples of poor commissioning practices. In order to fight back we need to stand firm about the standards we hold. A short-life working party will take this work forward and will report back to P&D and Council.
In the meantime, I ask your opinion on what a quality physiotherapy intervention or service should look like. Let me know and I will feed your comments and examples into the working group.
Last week, the CSP joined the Allied Health Professions Federation (AHPF) at the Department of Health's listening event.
These events are hosted by members of the NHS Future Forum. At our event the forum members were Earl Howe and Dr Kathy McLean. In attendance was the Chief Health Professions Officer, Karen Middleton.
We spent two hours talking to Earl Howe and Dr McLean about our concerns with the Health and Social Care Bill, answering questions about how to improve it.
Phil Gray and I were armed with real-life examples gathered from our own listening exercise, where members responded to our member survey.
We asked CSP members to provide examples from their own experiences about rationing of physiotherapy, and of the unintended consequences of Any Willing Provider (now re-titled Any Qualified Provider).
Earl Howe listened and commented that ‘competition was not an end in itself, but a means of empowering patients'.
At the listening event Phil and I used the CSP England briefing, available to all members. It offers a CSP view to the questions raised in the listening events, giving tips on how members may bring their own experiences to the exercise.
The AHPF were able to support each other, and gave a range give a range examples and solutions. The AHPF represent 180,000 health care professionals.
They delivered the resounding message that AHPs needed to be represented in the new structures at all levels of decision-making.
Otherwise, they argued, decision makers would through no fault of their own fail to appreciate the contribution that we can make, particularly in a managing patients across the whole patient pathway.
Dr McLean, who is a consultant in elderly care by background, spoke up for AHPs and explained that in care of the elderly, team work with AHPs was essential.
We all left the meeting feeling that we had been heard, hoping that we may have made some impact upon the development of the Health and Social Care Bill.
Meanwhile the local election results were coming in, with heavy losses for the Liberal Democrats. You will all now have heard Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems speaking up for the NHS.
Our meeting was a small contribution to the process, but timing is everything. As the bigger picture developed outside of the meeting we hoped that the day might turn out to be a tipping point, where the views of frontline staff might be enough to make a change.
- Ann
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