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Commissioning for Quality in Rheumatoid Arthritis (CQRA)

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Commissioning for Quality in Rheumatoid Arthritis (CQRA) was a Joint Working Partnership between healthcare professionals in the NHS, academia (University of Keele), NRAS and industry (Roche Products Limited) which operated approximately between 2010 and 2013.  

The aim of the CQRA team was to: 

  • prioritise RA, and standardise and improve the quality of RA service delivery in the UK by developing and driving implementation of clinically-relevant commissioning metrics; (this was prior to the introduction of NICE Quality Standards and the first national audit in early RA). 
  • capture and improve the patient experience of care by developing and validating Patient Reported Experience Measures (PREMs) for RA 

The above aims were very successfully delivered and some of the tools, particularly the PREMs for RA and for ‘all rheumatic conditions’ are still in use by some units and so we decided not to remove them when launching the new NRAS website in 2020. 

Some of the tools developed such as the commissioning metrics have been superseded by the National Early Inflammatory Arthritis Audit (measuring services against the NICE Quality Standards in RA) and consequently archived by NRAS. 

CQRA tools for download: PREMs for RA and non-RA rheumatic conditions 

CQRA have developed a PREMs tool which has been piloted and validated in patients at study sites to establish how well it captures the patient experience of RA services. A modified PREMs for use in patients with non-RA rheumatic conditions is also available. 

CQRA published data: PREMs 

Results from the RA PREMs pilot survey were presented at BSR 2013 and following validation, at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting 2013. Data from the survey in non-RA rheumatic conditions were presented at BSR 2014