Thanks to all of you who have taken part in our campaign to get asthma standards. Due to you, 85 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion in parliament, and government is under pressure to do something more on asthma.
Here’s what we believe will happen as a result.
The Department of Health is going to set up an asthma working group with three aims in mind.
- They will look for ways to improve asthma services in a major piece of work they are now doing on another respiratory condition (COPD). This could mean that everyone with respiratory conditions like asthma gets re-diagnosed (many people are currently misdiagnosed), that local respiratory networks will be set up to improve respiratory services and that people deemed ‘at-risk’, perhaps because of recent hospitalization, will get more attention.
- They will then consider the problems currently facing people with asthma and make recommendations about how to address them. For example, this might result in changes to the way GPs are paid (through the ‘Quality and Outcomes Framework’) and to the way the NHS is measured (through so-called ‘quality metrics’).
- Finally, the group will assess whether more needs to be done, and establish the case for a full strategy on asthma. This will need to be agreed by a new clinical board the DH has set up.
The Chair of the asthma working group is a well-respected asthma clinician who has worked for Asthma UK, and the charity has nominated three other people to the working group - all established asthma clinicians. The next step is over to them and we will look forward to seeing what recommendations they make.
So in summary, we have achieved a major milestone in our campaign, and it’s very much down to the pressure you have brought to bear. We now need to let the asthma group do its work and review its recommendations. Then we can begin our campaign for the recommendations to be implemented.
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