Making a differential diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is not straightforward. This is partly because of its heterogeneous presentation and partly because many patients with PsA are initially diagnosed with psoriasis and treated in primary care or by dermatologists, with referral to rheumatologists being delayed. Once diagnosed, optimal disease control requires frequent specialist monitoring, adjustment or switching of therapies, and management of comorbidities and concomitant diseases, as well as attention to patients’ overall well-being. Given the breadth of expertise that diagnosis and management of PsA requires, we sought to define a collaborative, structured framework that supports the optimisation of multidisciplinary care for patients with PsA in Europe.

An expert panel comprising four rheumatologists, three dermatologists, two specialist nurses and one psychologist–from Spain, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy–met face-to-face to take part in a modified Delphi exercise.

The result of this exercise is a set of recommendations that are based on combining published evidence with the panel's extensive clinical experience. Recommendations can be implemented in a number of ways, but the central call-to-action of this framework is the need for improved collaboration between dermatologists (or primary care physicians) and rheumatologists. This could occur in a variety of different formats: standard referral pathways, multidisciplinary physician meetings to discuss patient cases, or ‘one stop’, combined clinics.

We anticipate that when the majority of patients with PsA receive regular multidisciplinary care, improved patient outcomes will follow, although robust research is needed to explore this assumption.