Voicepiece
Chief health professions officer Kay East talks about the way AHPs can help to improve chronic disease management.
It is staggering to think that in Britain 17.5 million people may be living with a chronic disease, representing a tremendous burden for the NHS.
For example, 80 per cent of GP consultations relate to chronic disease and people with chronic diseases use up to 60 per cent of hospital bed days. This is the area that many allied health professionals work in, making sure that this group of patients have the best quality of life possible. It is an area where working in partnership with patients is central to AHP practice, giving patients the skills to manage their condition successfully while achieving the maximum function possible in their daily lives.
There still remains a great deal to do if we are going to become active partners with our colleagues across the entire health community to make sure that the complex mix of health and social care is co-ordinated. Case management is the key for these people with who often have more than one chronic condition and AHPs can play a significant role in proactively managing care within multidisciplinary, multi-agency teams.
Managing complex care must be underpinned by use of good information systems so that care planning is streamlined. People who are at risk can be identified and provided with the services they need at critical times when their care needs are more challenging.
This raises the important need for research in practice as interventions need to be supported by evidence. The AHP research base needs to be robust and cover the whole range of patient care.
Managing chronic disease well, in partnership with patients who are experts in their care, is where the future of health care delivery needs to be. There is a great deal already going on to develop existing initiatives, the national service frameworks, the new GMS contract, developments in IT, the expert patients programme and all the work going on to give patients more choice in the delivery of their health care.
This gives all AHPs an opportunity to play a central role at local level in a model of delivery that really reflects the AHP approach to patient care. AHPs have excellent critical reasoning and appraisal skills. They have the ability to influence the planning of care for this vulnerable group of people for whom early and co-ordinated interventions can make such a difference.
