Frequently asked questions
The national MSK audit will populate a national online data dashboard and audit system to provide national reports and local reports for participating services designed to support improvements in the quality of care for patients with MSK conditions.
The national MSK audit will play a crucial role in identifying variations in MSK healthcare practices, benchmarking performance, and driving improvements in patient outcomes and safety on a national scale.
A team of researchers at Keele University, led by Professor Jonathan Hill are conducting the national MSK audit. The team consists of - Dr Roanna Burgess, Principal Investigator, James Bailey, Data Manager, Professor Kelvin Jordan, Lead Statistician, and Tamanda Smoke, Study Coordinator. You can contact the team via e-mail at fmhs.nationalmskaudit@keele.ac.uk
The British Society for Rheumatology are funding the national MSK audit. Keele University are sponsoring the audit.
Please note that the MSK National Audit & Research Database is not a portfolio adopted study.
Your organisation can participate in the national MSK audit by submitting data, interacting with your data, and contributing to its ongoing development through our dedicated community of practice forum and events. You can also engage in audit-related activities such as training, implementation of audit recommendations, and dissemination of findings.
While participation in the national MSK audit is voluntary, it is strongly encouraged as it enables MSK Providers and healthcare professionals to contribute to improving patient care and demonstrates a commitment to quality improvement.
You will need to: gain approval/sign off from your Organisation, embed collection of a standardised set of outcome and experience measures (patient survey), embed a standardised clinical template (FCP services only initially), fill out a questionnaire about your organisation/service model, upload routinely collected data to a portal 6-monthly, engage with our Community of Practice.
Patient data confidentiality and privacy are of utmost importance in the national MSK audit. Robust measures are in place to ensure compliance with data protection regulations and ethical guidelines. Data is de-identified and aggregated to maintain anonymity.
Audit findings are used to identify areas for improvement, develop targeted interventions, and inform policy decisions. They can drive changes in clinical guidelines, care pathways, and quality improvement initiatives to enhance patient care.
Yes, audit results and reports will be made available to participating healthcare organisations at an individual level. Collective national data however will be fully anonymised, participating organisations will therefore only know how they compare to unidentified peers.
- Use the form on this website (keele.ac.uk/nationalmskaudit) to register your interest
- Data alignment: Look at the documents for our data dictionary (patient survey questions) and governance (consent statements and data privacy) to make sure that your data collection will be aligned to what we need
- Test data submission: Follow the provided guidelines and submit your data securely through our online platform.
- Keele Data Validation: Our expert team will validate the data and work closely with you to ensure accuracy and address any questions or concerns.
- First data submission: We will agree a date with you for your first formal start and then initial data submission to the research database
- Performance Feedback: We will provide you with a performance report for your organisation, highlighting your strengths, areas for improvement, and actionable recommendations.
The National MSK Audit and Database has received favourable ethical opinion from Central Bristol Research Ethics Committee, REC reference 23/SW/0059. As this is a research database HRA approval is not required.
Data shared with the national audit and research database is collected by you as a Healthcare Provider using an online platform of your choice as part of routine MSK care. Your MSK service uses the data gathered to inform individual patient care, and together with Keele University, to additionally conduct service evaluation, audit, and research. In order for data to be shared with Keele University and stored within the research database, patients need to provide informed consent. This consent includes consent for data to be used as part of the national audit and also for future research.
This study has been reviewed and approved by the South-West - Central Bristol Research Ethics Committee via IRAS for the research database (REC reference number 23/SW/0059, IRAS project ID 324885). The database will use a consent model for permissions regarding the sharing, storage, and use of patient data.
To take part in the national MSK audit and research database, you will need to liaise with your MSK service lead (to gain initial support), your Research & Development (R&D) department and your organisations governance team (this may be in partnership with R&D dependent on local policies to review and sign off governance), your informatics lead (to align data and agree data transfer process).
All governance documents are available on the website:
In addition, you will need to setup a data sharing agreement between Keele University and your organisation.
Data sharing agreements are developed by Keele CTU with all registered/participating services. As part of the onboarding process, a copy of the DSA is sent to each provider for review. Once the provider is happy with the DSA, this can be signed and sent to Keele contracts team for signature. A copy of the fully executed DSA is then sent back to the provider for their records.
Keele University and your healthcare organisation are joint data controllers for the information provided.
As the study is not a portfolio adopted study, there is no SoeCat required.
We would prefer for the data to be tab delimited text format (txt) but we can also accept xml files. If you request the xml schema it can be shared with you.
You will be provided with a link to a SharePoint folder which only specific email addresses can access. We will ask for a second email address to associate with the folder in instances where the lead contact is unavailable.
In an ideal situation we would like monthly data transfers, however if this would not be feasible 3 monthly or 6 monthly transfers would also be acceptable.