Summary
This publication provides the most timely picture available of people using NHS funded secondary mental health, learning disabilities and autism services in England. These are experimental statistics which are undergoing development and evaluation. This information will be of use to people needing access to information quickly for operational decision making and other purposes. More detailed information on the quality and completeness of these statistics is made available later in our Mental Health Bulletin: Annual Report publication series.
Please note Provisional May 2019 data is not being included in this report as Final May 2019 data is being published alongside this report in Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics Final May, Provisional June 2019.
A correction has been made to this publication on 07 May 2020. This amendment relates to a number of statistics published here; the specific measures effected are listed in the Metadata file available in the below link. All listed measures have now been corrected. NHS Digital apologises for any inconvenience caused.
From April 2020 onwards, NHS Digital has been implementing a multiple submission window model (MSWM) for MHSDS. This allows providers to retrospectively submit data for a specific reporting period once the initial provisional and performance submission windows have closed. For a limited time, providers were given the opportunity to submit revised monthly data for all months within 2019/20 using the MSWM.
As of January 2021, NHS Digital has now released revised 'End of Year' versions of the main monthly csv files for each month between April 2019 and February 2020 which reflect these revised 2019/20 MSWM submissions that occurred after 'Final' monthly data had already been published.
Both the 'Final' and 'End of Year' versions of the main monthly csv files are available to download under 'Resources'. The key facts corresponding to both versions are also presented below.
Key Facts based on 'End of Year' data
- At the end of April, there were 1,315,407 people in contact with services; the majority of these (1,025,519) were in adult mental health services. There were 218,678 people in contact with children and young people’s mental health services and 115,826 in learning disabilities and autism services.
- 30,1477 new referrals were received into services during April and 1,677,693 care contacts were attended.
- 21,057 people were subject to the Mental Health Act at the end of April, including 15,122 people detained in hospital.
Key Facts Based on 'Final' data (superseded by 'End of Year' statistics)
- At the end of April, there were 1,350,695 people in contact with services; the majority of these (1,049,789) were in adult mental health services. There were 230,772 people in contact with children and young people’s mental health services and 116,348 in learning disabilities and autism services.
- 303,373 new referrals were received into services during April and 1,653,828 care contacts were attended.
- 21,184 people were subject to the Mental Health Act at the end of April, including 15,310 people detained in hospital.
Notes about this publication
This is the first Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics publication that uses data collected through the Strategic Data Collection Service in the cloud (SDCS Cloud), more information can be found here: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/strategic-data-collection-service-in-the-cloud-sdcs-cloud. There were some operational issues in implementing this new system. It is also the first time data are linked and using the Master Person Service (MPS), more information can be found here: https://digital.nhs.uk/services/master-person-service. The May 2019 publication has also been published on 8 August 2019.
Extensive time series analysis has been undertaken at national and provider level to understand trends following these changes compared to previous patterns. From the results analysed, the proportion of providers and CCGs for each measure with large changes between March and April 2019 is similar to that between March and April 2018. These are both higher than the proportion of providers and CCGs exhibiting with large changes between months within the same financial year (including between April and May 2019). There is likely to be a number of factors leading to greater changes between months in different financial years.
Several providers have been contacted to understand the background to specific issues and findings are highlighted in the data quality note. A specific issue that predates the April publication is highlighted below due to its potentially large impact on the national figures:
- Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust (RW5) has been an outlier on the numbers of referrals for Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) services for several months and we have been actively engaged with them on understanding the extent to which this is driven by data quality issues. Their figure for April 2019 is even more of an outlier and this now has a large impact on the England EIP statistics. The national figure is reported for EIP23d - Open referrals on EIP pathway waiting for treatment as 3,081; however if we were to remove the activity of Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust from this figure the EIP23d - Open referrals on EIP pathway waiting for treatment in April 2019 would be approximately 1,900. EIP statistics for April 2019 should be interpreted in this context and we are continuing to engage with RW5 to support them in understanding and if necessary rectifying the issue.
Additional Data Quality information for the month can be found in the Provider comments csv.
On 13 August 2019, we have made small updates to the wording of a few distinct elements of the report to improve consistency and clarity, no statistics have been changed.
Last edited: 22 January 2021 4:24 pm