A PILOT scheme which aims to improve the care of patients with back pain is being trialled in the North-East.

The Scaling Up improvement programme will be piloted in Darlington, Teesside and North Yorkshire.

The areas have been selected by the Health Foundation charity to be part of a new £3.5m improvement programme.

The programme is sponsoring seven health care projects in the UK with the aim to improve health care delivery or the way people manage their own care through the delivery of successful health care improvement interventions at scale.

The regional team aims to improve the management of patients who have lower back pain over the next two-and-a-half years.

It will begin with a year-long pilot scheme starting in the summer in the South Tees Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Hambleton, Richmond and Whitby CCG areas, with Darlington CCG and other North-East CCGs planning to follow closely behind.

The project will involve bringing in an evidence-based care pathway that integrates care from the GP surgery through to the specialists in hospital.

Over the course of the programme CCGs across the North-East will take health care ideas, interventions and approaches that have been tested and shown to improve care at a small scale and deliver them at a larger scale.

Patients will have a named person in charge of their treatment and a clear plan of care appropriate to their needs.

Dr Andrea Jones, chairwoman of Darlington CCG and lead GP commissioner for the Regional Back Pain Project said, “By giving people the information and ability to manage their own symptoms and put in place lifestyle changes to prevent frequency of recurrence, we can then prioritise those people and identify who may go on to have more disabling problems, and with the correct interventions at the right time can significantly prevent their problems from becoming chronic and the consequent effect it has upon their overall wellbeing.”