NHS England Prosthetic Service Review update

As well as being a stakeholder, Brian is directly involved in the review process as a Patient and Public Participation Member of the review team, and forms an integral part of the communications subgroup along with representatives from the Limbless Association and LimbPower.

Below is the most recent Review update:

NHS England is responsible for planning and buying specialised services for people who need complex disability equipment. This includes all major upper and lower limb amputees, and people with congenital limb deficiencies who have a potential to use a prosthesis to help them mobilise or improve upper limb function.

We contacted stakeholders in March last year to update on the review of specialised prosthetics services. Following extensive engagement with both patients and staff working in prosthetics centres across the country, we had begun to explore some potential changes that could be made to the existing service specification and NHS England Prosthetic Service Review update clinical model in order to address some of the issues that have been raised by patients, carers and professionals.

Any changes that are proposed would need to be based on an accurate picture of current provision, and since April 2019 the focus of the review has been on working with all centres to ensure we have consistent, detailed information about the number of patients seen and the type of care they receive. This data collection is progressing well, and we have begun to analyse the data, picking up where we need additional or clarified information, and working with centres to improve this so that we can be confident that we have the robust information required to progress the review.

One of the main points raised by patients was over concerns about equal access to equipment options, regardless of which centre they attended. Work to address these issues has been continuing, and the National Framework for Prosthetics equipment will be operational from April 2021.

This framework means that the same equipment and devices will be available to all prosthetic centres in England. This should ensure that all patients will have access to the appropriate equipment to meet their clinical need regardless of which prosthetics centre they attend, offering more patient choice and standardisation on price.

Due to the present situation, the Prosthetics Review team is currently re-deployed to support the national response to the COVID-19 incident. When it is safe to resume, we will restart our engagement work with you.
We greatly appreciate your support to date and look forward to continuing this work once we are better able to do so. When this work resumes, we plan to organise some engagement events, particularly with some of the patient groups who may be affected by potential changes to the clinical model, including children and young people, people with complex needs, and those with upper limb prostheses.

We will be in touch with people with more information about these events, but if you would be interested in being involved with these please contact us at england.prosthetics.transformation@nhs.net

Please can we also take this opportunity to remind people that if you have any concerns regarding your current prosthesis or rehabilitation needs please do contact your prosthetics centre. Your centre will be able to offer advice and support, and can offer a limited service in line with Government guidance, particularly for those patients in the vulnerable groups.

Please do let any colleagues or patients know that they can register as a stakeholder in order to receive updates from the Clinical Reference Group directly online at www.engage.england.nhs.uk/application/crg-stakeholder-reg-april-2019