Daily Insight: Not up to standard yet

Nearly three quarters of adults are failing to receive basic mental health help in the community within four weeks, which is the timeframe that NHS England wants to introduce as a national standard, data released for the first time shows.

Figures shared with HSJ also reveal two-thirds of children accessing community services are waiting more than four weeks from referral to treatment.

In 2021, NHSE announced a clinically led review of waiting time standards in mental health, including a four-week standard for non-urgent community care. Funding and data issues have delayed their approval and implementation.

Now, new data compiled by NHS Benchmarking, which collects and analyses figures from mental health trusts, paints the first national picture of performance within four weeks for community mental health teams.

Aggregated figures for 2021-22 showed 72 per cent of adults and 67 per cent of children waited longer than four weeks.

NHSE said in 2021 that the adult measure would “be a powerful lever to address key challenges in delivery of our NHS long-term plan ambition for adults with severe mental illnesses, including addressing historical underinvestment, disruption to delivery as a result of the pandemic and increasing concern about long waits”.

Message still in bottle?

NHS comms were called into question again yesterday when acute trusts reported high demand at emergency departments during the junior doctor strikes.

Leaders had hoped prominent media coverage and NHS announcements about the action would reduce demand, and several claimed it showed national communications about the situation was lacking.

NHSE said some hospitals saw their busiest Monday of the year so far yesterday, which it said “presents a major challenge as our staff continue to do all they can to mitigate the impact of the industrial action for patients.”

Nearly all directors HSJ spoke to said they had cancelled substantial amounts of elective care, to free up consultants to cover emergency and ward work.

One CEO in the Midlands said they had “seen a real surge in emergency demand”, blaming an absence of “national comms”.

“Consultants acting down are inevitably slower on the IT and processes, so discharges [are slower],” the person said. Elective cancellations meant while they had been “in touching distance of hitting” the target to eliminate 78-week waiters by the end of March, they “will now miss this which is a real shame”.