16 September 2026
The National Early Inflammatory Autoimmune Diseases Audit (NEIAA) helps rheumatology services understand how care is being delivered, identify variation, and use their own data to support service improvement.
By submitting data and regularly reviewing local performance, teams can better understand where delays or gaps may be occurring across the patient pathway and compare their results with other services nationally.
Supporting improvement in the East of England
A rheumatology service in the East of England has recently received support from the NEIAA team in reviewing its early inflammatory arthritis pathway and improve access to care.
The service was looking to redesign its early inflammatory arthritis triage process, with a particular focus on meeting the three-week access standard and increasing the proportion of patients starting treatment within six weeks.
As part of this work, the NEIAA team shared an example of an early inflammatory arthritis referral proforma, helping the service draw on good practice from elsewhere and consider how its own referral and triage process could be strengthened so the right patients are seen in the right clinic.
The team is also expanding Clinical Admin access to NEIAA among colleagues within the service. This will allow more members of the rheumatology team to access and review their audit data regularly, giving them greater visibility of performance across the pathway.
Regularly reviewing NEIAA data can help services identify where delays are occurring, understand whether changes to their pathway are having an impact and focus improvement activity where it is most needed.
By combining audit data with shared learning from other services, NEIAA can support rheumatology teams to move from identifying variation to making practical changes locally.
Use your NEIAA data to review and improve care
Submitting complete and timely data to NEIAA helps build a clearer picture of care nationally, while also giving individual services valuable information about their own performance.
Make use of the NEIAA tools, data and dashboards to review care within your service, identify opportunities for improvement, and see how your Trust or Health Board compares with others nationally.