Musculoskeletal Partners Network

Musculoskeletal Partners Network (MSKPN) exists to raise standards and improve quality in Musculoskeletal healthcare in both the private and public sectors.

A series of recommendations have been produced to support all MSK healthcare providers to collect consistent quality indicators and enable consistent analysis of these. Providing these recommendations provides a starting point for our industry to strengthen our collective voice to highlight the value we bring to the patients and communities we serve.

MSKPN’s vision is for MSK healthcare providers to widely adopt this approach, engage in collaborative review of the outcomes and support further development of the approach itself.

The quality team

Sponsor Simon Devane
Chair Claire Small, Clinical Director, Pure Sports Medicine
Clinical Leads Matt Todman, Six Physio
Nicola Graham, Tops Health
Helen Preston, Preston Health
Josh Smith, Ten Physio
Quality lead Matthew Carr, MSKPN
Quality standard development

Working with a multidisciplinary team of MSK industry stakeholders, MSKPN has outlined a set of agreed quality standards for MSK healthcare. It is intended that this guidance will enable providers to collect consistent outcomes and enable meaningful industry comparison of the subsequent findings.

The recommended quality standards are intended for use across all MSK healthcare professionals, including but not limited to:

  • Physiotherapists
  • Osteopaths
  • Chiropractors
  • Sports and Exercise Therapists
  • Sports Medicine Practitioners
  • Musculoskeletal Podiatrists
  • Orthopaedic surgeons

Quality indicators

The following criteria were applied in the review process to identify agreed quality indicators:

  • Ease – to have processes that are intuitive, patient and clinician-friendly, and are not time-consuming
  • Cost – to minimise implementation costs and avoid costly licence fees for use of selected outcome measures
  • Value / insight – to adopt measures which meaningfully differentiate between poor and good quality

Quality indicators were agreed to provide data on the following factors central to high-quality outcomes from MSK healthcare services:

  • Pain – a measure to consistently identify changes in patient’s pain levels
  • Function – a measure to consistently identify changes in patient’s functional abilities
  • Rating of change – a measure to identify patient’s perceived overall change in clinical presentation
  • Experience – a measure to consistently identify patient’s satisfaction with their care

Useful Resources

Establishing a MSK Quality Standard – MSKPN Recommendations for data collection

Next Steps

MSKPN will continue to champion this work on behalf of our members and commit to ensuring the results of this approach are widely communicated across the MSK healthcare industry and to all our members.

For more information on the phasing and timing of data collection, details of the recommended the detailed data sets, guidance on preparing data for data analysis, net promoter score and next steps, get in touch with matthewcarr@mskpn.co.uk