MS Service Provision in the UK: Raising the Bar
As we come towards the latter part of the 3-year plan for Raising the Bar it has become increasingly apparent that the clinical community is now best placed to take forward any remaining initiatives associated with the national work, and that MS Academy's involvement has come to an end.
Whilst Raising the Bar began as a clinician-led initiative, it quickly became an ethos which has seen MS-focussed healthcare professionals around the country inspired to lead change, share learning and to raise the bar for MS.
It is incredibly rewarding to see that much of the 3-year plan set out in 2019 has already been achieved! Read more:
The aim of Raising the Bar for MS as a national initiative has always been to raise the bar for the whole MS community.
Throughout last year’s conference, one theme came back to us time and again. That was the wider importance of wellbeing both amongst people with MS, and amongst healthcare professionals in the MS community. Read more in the article below...
Raising the Bar 2020
Last year's conference to discuss and share all things focussed on ‘raising the bar for MS’ has been entirely virtual. Every session is now available to watch on demand, so if you missed any of the programme, you have time to come back to it now.
Just log in via raisingthebar2020.com with your username and password and go back into the sessions via the Auditorium, or the Agenda. To register for the meeting, please follow the link below.
Workstreams
More information
- Raising the bar 2020 poster session
- Real people doing real things to make a difference to those with MS
- How the MS community has been ‘raising the bar’ during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Tackling MS variance and raising the bar – our 3-year vision
This activity has been supported by sponsorship from Roche Products Ltd, Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd, Sanofi Genzyme and Biogen Idec Ltd. The sponsors have had no control over the educational content of this activity.
Background
MS Academy initially held a debate in May 2018 on whether or not the new NHS England treatment algorithm will reduce variation in the prescribing of DMTs in England. This was followed by a much larger meeting of representatives from MS disease-modifying therapy prescribing centres across the UK, in Birmingham in November: MS Service Provision in the UK 2018: the Way Forward. The meeting was a great success and generated many ideas and proposals that if implemented could potentially solve the problem of variance in the NHS.
In July 2019 we held the second in our series of national events to discuss, inspire and instigate action to ‘raise the bar for MS services’: MS Service Provision in the UK 2019: Raising the Bar. Read more about the idea behind this second meeting: Let’s raise the bar for MS Services
At our previous meetings, we reviewed many of the underlying reasons for variation in MS services and put in place potential solutions. Progress and activities around ‘patients as partners’, the ‘social determinants of health’ and the ‘wellness & lifestyle’ workstreams will be reviewed.
The separate sub-committees will report back the results of their work and invite comment and further participation from other MS centres in the UK. Another output from the 2019 meeting was the setting-up and running of a leadership training programme. The good news is that the leadership course was funded and the first group of leaders will have graduated by the time of our 2020 ‘Raising the Bar’ meeting. As part of this leadership course, they will complete a national project the output of which will be presented at the meeting.
Another important remit of the ‘Raising the Bar’ meeting is sharing best practice. We will also be asking some of our previous MS Academy winners to showcase their projects and to update us on how the MS Academy has changed their practice. We will also be expecting participating centres to present examples of service improvement projects that have made a difference in their centres at the meeting. Attendees will vote and the winner(s) will be given an opportunity to present their work at the meeting.