Chief Allied Health Professions Officer extends her remit to two additional professions

3 Apr 2017 02:13 PM

NHS England has extended the remit of the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer to two additional regulated professions.

Since 1 April 2017, Operating Department Practitioners (ODPs) and Osteopaths have joined the existing 12 health professionals currently within the remit of the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer at NHS England.  This new representation will support wider professional engagement and shared working initiatives for NHS England and the 14 professions.

This will involve sharing national working goals and approaches around improving patient care and delivery and wider areas around prevention, self-care, self-management and medicines mechanisms.

Prior to 1 April, there were 12 professions that came within the remit of the Chief Allied Health Professions Officer across England, with over 146,000 working across the NHS and wider care system. All are registered with the regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).  This will now increase to over 162,000. ODPs are registered with the HCPC and Osteopaths with the General Osteopathic Council.

Chief Allied Health Professions Officer, Suzanne Rastrick, said:  “I am very pleased to welcome these two additional professions within my remit.  We are committed to making greater use of these professionals in all aspects of NHS service delivery to promote the adoption of new ways of working across the health and care system and to improve patient care. The priority is to ensure we realise the full potential of all fourteen professions to contribute to prevention and health promotion, improving outcomes and patient experience, increasing capacity and improving cost-effectiveness.

The new professions are:

Currently, 12 Allied Health Professions, account for 1 in 10 NHS staff, they are a diverse group of practitioners who deliver high quality care to patients by carrying out assessment, diagnosis, treatment and discharge across a range of settings.

The new arrangements follow a series of discussions, events and roadshows undertaken in 2016 by a team led by Suzanne Rastrick in developing the sector wide Allied Health Professions into Action.

This guidance provides a blueprint for Clinical Commissioning Groups, provider organisations, health leaders and local authorities to fully utilise and involve Allied Health Professionals in transformation programmes and delivery of NHS England’s Five Year Forward View and Delivery Plan.