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.
• COVID-19 and the production of statistics
Due to the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) disruption, it would seem that this is now starting to affect the quality and coverage of some of our statistics, such as an increase in non-submissions for some datasets. We are also starting to see some different patterns in the submitted data. For example, fewer patients are being referred to hospital and more appointments being carried out via phone/telemedicine/email. Therefore, data should be interpreted with care over the COVID-19 period.
• Early release of statistics
To support the ongoing COVID-19 work June 2020 monthly statistics were made available early and presented on our supplementary information pages.
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/supplementary-information/2020/provisional-june-2020-mental-health-statistics
• Changing existing measures
The move to MHSDS version 4.1 from April 2020 has brought with it changes to the dataset; the construction of a number of measures have been changed as a result. Improvements in the methodology of reporting delay of discharge has also resulted in a change in the construction of the measure from the April 2020 publication onwards. Full details of these changes are available in the associated Metadata file.
• New measures
A number of new measures have been included from the April 2020 reporting period onwards:
• MHS76 Count of people subject to restrictive interventions
• MHS77 Count of restrictive interventions
• MHS78 Discharges from adult acute beds eligible for 72 hour follow up in the reporting period
• MHS79 Discharges from adult acute beds followed up within 72 hours in the reporting period
• MHS80 Proportion of discharges from adult acute beds eligible for 72 hour follow up - followed up in the reporting period
Full details of these are available in the associated Metadata file.
• CCG and STP changes
A number of changes to NHS organisations were made operationally effective from 1 April 2020. These changes included: 74 former Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) merging to form 18 new CCGs; alterations to commissioning hubs; provider mergers; and the incorporation of Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) into the NHS commissioning hierarchy. The Organisation Data Service (ODS) is responsible for publishing organisation and practitioner codes, along with related national policies and standards. A series of ODS data amendments are required to support the introduction of these changes. This would normally result in a number of organisations becoming ‘legally’ closed including the 74 former CCGs. However, to minimise any burden to the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic and remove any non-critical activity, these organisations remain open within ODS data. ODS aim to both legally and operationally close predecessor organisations involved in April 2020 Reconfiguration on 30 September 2020.
Activity may be recorded against either former or current organisations, depending on data providers and processors ability to transition to the new organisation codes at this time. The same activity will not be recorded against both former and current organisations.
The impact for the measures presented here is minimal as CCG is derived in the majority of all cases it is used within this publication. From the June 2020 reporting period onwards, we will be reporting under the new CCGs. For the April 2020 and May 2020 reporting periods, activity was reported against a mixture of former and current organisations.
Corrections have been made to this publication on 20 August 2020 and 9 August 2021. These amendments relate to 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.