Arthritis Watch

The NHS in England is going through significant changes, whilst needing to find £20bn of "efficiency savings" by 2015.

Over the past months, people with arthritis throughout England have been telling Arthritis Care that

• services are being cut;
• waiting times are going up; and
• people with arthritis are finding it harder to access the services they need

We wanted to find out how widespread these problems are for people with arthritis. Knowing the full scale and impact of these changes will help us form a complete picture of what’s happening where.

ArthritisWatch was Arthritis Care's evidence-gathering project to find out what people with arthritis really need from their local services, and identify where local health services are failing to deliver this (from GP assessment, through to treatment and after-care).

Thank you for helping us in December 2011 to gather this evidence by filling in our form and telling us about your experience of local health services.

In particular, we asked for your feedback on the following:

• Recent cuts or changes to services for arthritis
• Difficulties in accessing services such as hydrotherapy
• Increased waiting times for treatment  
• Whether you receive a qood-quality service from your GP
• Whether you receive enough support to look after yourself
• Anything else which you think we should know about

This information will help us to campaign against service cuts and lobby for improvements to services at local and national level.

We are currently analysing the results and will report back soon.