Fair access to treatment

Equitable access to arthritis services

Our vision is that every person who experiences an MSK condition has access to treatments and services at the most appropriate time and place to them and tailored to their needs.

There are currently great discrepancies in the access to services and support for people with MSK conditions. Depending on where a person lives in the country can have an impact on the services available to them and the length of time they wait for a referral to a specialist consultant or for treatments, such as physiotherapy or surgery.

While there are plans in place to reduce waiting times, we believe that people with more complex conditions or obesity must not be taken off the waiting lists, just to bring the numbers down.

Read Our Response to the Men’s Health Strategy

We know that the longer a person waits for treatment, the likelihood is that their condition will worsen and health outcomes may not be as good following a treatment. This compounds health inequalities and is unacceptable. 

Read our six-part package to support people with arthritis waiting for joint replacement surgery in England: Supporting people with arthritis waiting for surgery

We call for strong MSK leadership at a local and national level. We also want to see improved robust data collection on MSK, especially at primary and community level, to understand the bigger picture of service provision across the four nations.