In the UK, people with rarer or less well-recognised long-term conditions generally wait for months to receive an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. Many
people with these conditions wait for years, and some, like Anne, wait for decades to access appropriate medical care.
People’s conditions fall on a spectrum, with some people experiencing more
severe or life-limiting illness. We focus on five specialist services that deliver care for people with more severe conditions:
- the psoriasis clinic at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, which delivers care
for people with psoriasis across Greater Manchester and people with severe
psoriasis across north-west England - the IBD service at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, which delivers care
for people with IBD in Edinburgh and the Lothian and Borders regions of
Scotland - the axial spondyloarthritis service at the Royal National Hospital for
Rheumatic Diseases, part of Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation
Trust - the osteoporosis service at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust,
which runs fracture liaison services and delivers treatment for people with
osteoporosis and rare bone diseases across Oxfordshire - the specialist spondyloarthritis service at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS
Trust, which delivers multidisciplinary care for people who have multiple
related inflammatory conditions, in particular axial spondyloarthritis, IBDassociated arthritis, psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.