STarT Back in Practice Successful management of back pain is based on an effective consultation characterised by listening and information giving. Health care professionals involved in the STarT Back trial...

STarT Back has been described by an experienced NHS Manager as “the easiest business case I’ve ever had to write”. The STarTBack Approach is important to all those who commission...

The Keele STarT Back Screening Tool is a brief validated tool (Hill et al 2008), designed to screen primary care patients with low back pain for prognostic indicators that are...

Patient information If you have back pain, you may find further information helpful to better understand your condition and how you can help yourself. You can access further information with:...

Welcome to STarT Back training online. Equip yourself with the basics to start stratified care in your workplace. AcknowledgementsIndividual modules: Kika Konstantinou, Julie AshworthResearch / support: Chris Main, Jonathan Hill,...

RESEARCH & IMPLEMENTATION

The Keele STarT Back Screening Tool is a brief validated tool (Hill et al 2008), designed to screen primary care patients with low back pain for prognostic indicators that are relevant to initial decision making. The STarT Back trial, published in The Lancet, was designed to compare the clinical and cost effectiveness of stratified management approach...

TRAINING & RESOURCES

Welcome to STarT Back training online. Equip yourself with the basics to start stratified care in your workplace. The STarT Back training team at the Versus Arthritis Primary Care Centre, Keele University have run training courses for several years. There are two elements to becoming proficient in the STarT Back approach: background theory behind the concept of targeting and screening...

PATIENTS & CLINICIANS

STarT Back in Practice. Successful management of back pain is based on an effective consultation characterised by listening and information giving. Health care professionals utilising the STarT Back in their clinical practice are given education to support them when dealing with patients with back pain. Patients are offered information leaflet to help them to understand more ...

COMMISSIONERS

STarT Back has been described by an experienced NHS Manager as “the easiest business case I’ve ever had to write”. The STarTBack Approach is important to all those who commission services for patients with low back pain as it has been shown to be cost and clinically effective. It is endorsed by NICE and the NHS England Low Back and Radicular Pain Pathways (2017)...

Welcome

It is well known that back pain can be a considerable problem for some people, with great costs to them individually and to society as a whole. Effective treatments for back pain exist but often management based on clinical intuition alone fails to match the right patient to the right treatment. Stratified care approaches aim to improve this situation, with a more systematic approach to management decisions.

STarT Back is an example of a stratified care approach. It matches patients to treatments based on prognosis or risk of poor clinical outcome.

The STarT Back approach uses a simple tool to match patients to treatment packages appropriate for them. This has been shown to:

-Significantly decrease disability from back pain

-Reduce time off work

-Save money by making better use of health resources

Taking the concept further it has been shown in the IMPaCT study that this approach can be successfully embedded into normal primary care. The STarT Back approach continues to be adopted across the UK and Internationally.

This website shares the knowledge, resources and experiences of the STarT Back approach for use by clinicians, providers, researchers and patients.