Contribution of growing part of NHS workforce should be measured as population ages

There is a lack of data on the scope of Allied Health Professionals, despite costing a reported £2bn in salaries and making up six per cent of the NHS workforce.

Allied Health Professionals (AHP) includes dieticians, physiotherapists and speech and language therapists working in both public and private settings. The number of full time practitioners has risen since 2002 by 51 per cent to 172,686.

Despite the growth of the workforce, data on the impact and roles carried out by AHPs has remained minimal and a report from Nuffield trust Health Foundation has been published today calling for more routine data collections to take place.

Holly Dorning, research analyst at the Nuffield Trust said: “With the population ageing and health and social care services under unprecedented financial pressure, there is a real need to understand the impact that different groups in the workforce have on quality. This helps us to ensure the quality of care people receive and importantly, allows us to spot opportunities for improvement.

“The data and information we have on people’s health and care has improved greatly in the past few years. We know much more about what is happening but it is important that all professional groups are included in this.

“We are however hampered by a huge data gap when we seek to understand the contribution AHPs make to peoples’ care. As we progress towards better joined up health and social care, it is crucial that we bridge this gap by designing datasets focused more on people which allow us to capture all aspects of care.”

AHPs work both alone and jointly with other professionals to improve care throughout the NHS, playing active roles in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of patients.

Information about the impact AHPs have on the quality of care people receive could provide insights into how the role might change as the population ages and more people develop increasingly complex needs.

The report ‘Focus on: Allied Health Professionals: can we measure quality of care?’ outlines the information already known about AHPs and explores six areas where quality of AHPs can be measured including capacity and effectiveness of services.