Skip to main content

Publication, Part of

Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics, Performance November 2024

Official statistics

Issue with Gender Breakdowns in Rates Measures

An issue has been identified with the Gender breakdowns in MHS81a, MHS84a, MHS116a, OAP05, OAP05a, OAP06, OAP06a, OAP07 and OAP07a. These breakdowns have been removed from the main and OAPs publication files and the files given a _v2 suffix. These breakdowns will be republished as part of the end of year processing.

28 January 2025 15:00 PM

Notes on Measures

New Measures

As part of the Performance September 2024 publication, the following has been added -

  • New "Upper Ethnicity" breakdowns for MHS106, MHS106a, MHS107 and MHS107a
  • A new measure evaluating the recording of presenting complaints (MHS148)

As part of the Performance October 2024 publication, the following has been added

  • 2 new referral spells measures (MRS15 and MRS16)
  • 2 new breakdowns for all referral spells measures - Commissioning Region, Sub ICB of GP Practice or Residence
  • 14 new OAPs measures relating to rates and proportions of inappropriate OAPs (OAP05 - OAP11a)

Reporting of Provisional data and the single submission window

From the Provisional April 2023 data onwards, all metrics in the publication are being published in both the performance and provisional files. This is to support a move towards a single submission window towards the end of 2023.

The single submission window would mean that instead of reporting both performance and provisional data, just one cut of data would be taken. The submission window would be increased meaning that providers have longer to submit the data but that the data published would effectively be the provisional data.


New Measures

As part of the Performance March 2024 publication, 4 new metrics (OAP01a, OAP02a, OAP03a, OAP04a) have been added to the Out of Area Placements (OAPs) file - all relating to Adult Acute Beds. 

As part of the Performance April 2024 publication, new metrics relating to the length of restraint for seclusion and segregation have been added. 

Full details are available in the Metadata file and Mental Health Services publication list.


New Restrictive Intervention Measures

For reporting pre April-24, the average minutes of restraint are calculated for restraints that started and ended in the month. As a result, for some restraint types, specifically seclusion and segregation, this can lead to averages that do not represent all uses of the restraint types. This is because these restraint types can occur over long periods of time, and as such cross months.

From April 2024 data onwards, these metrics will be amended to calculate the average minutes of restraint for all restraints that ended in the month. Additionally, 6 new restrictive intervention measures (MHS98a, MHS138a, MHS146, MHS146a, MHS147 and MHS147a) will be included that show the average number days (as median and mean) for incidents of seclusion and segregation that remain open at the end of the reporting period.

Full details of the methodological changes made for this publication can be found here. Changes to the code used to produce this publication are also reflected on GitHub and in the associated Metadata file.


MHSDS version change

The April 24 reporting period figures are the first reports using MHSDS v6. The implementation of MHSDS v6 includes a fundamental restructuring of the recording of key areas including (but not limited to) - service or team type, ward details and delayed discharges.

Full details of the methodological changes made for this publication can be found here. Changes to the code used to produce this publication are also reflected on GitHub and in the associated Metadata file.

In addition to this, data previously presented on Currency and Payments will no longer be included in this publication due to the removal of the Care Cluster tables as part of version 6. As a result of this, 6 metrics will be removed from the publication:

  • ACC33 - People assigned to an adult MH care cluster
  • ACC36 - People assigned to an adult MH care cluster within cluster review period
  • ACC37 - Proportion of people assigned to an adult MH care cluster within cluster review period
  • ACC54 - People at the end of the RP in settled accommodation
  • ACC62 - Proportion of people at the end of the RP in settled accommodation
  • MHS33 - People assigned to an adult MH Care Cluster at end of the reporting period

Full details of the changes to the dataset are available in the Technical Output Specification.

MHSDS VODIM Metrics

Following the implementation of version 6 of MHSDS, some small changes have been made to the data quality metrics presented in the VODIM file within this publication:

  • The construction of DQM09 has changed to reflect the fact that the Ward Site ID is now captured in the MHS903 Ward Details table. The calculation remains unchanged but the data is joined to the Ward Stay table from the MHS903 table.
  • DQM45 has been removed following the removal of the Provisional diagnosis table from the dataset. 
  • DQM51 has been adjusted to use data from either MHS101 or MHS102 as this data is now captured in both tables. Previously only MHS102 was used in this metric.

Implementation of referral spells using MHSDS data

Referral Spell methodology

As part of the September 2024 Performance publication in the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics publication series, a new set of metrics will be introduced which utilise a new methodology which groups sets of individual referrals into a referral spell. Using this methodology, a spell is defined as starting at the point the first referral that is in scope is received by a provider. From this point, other referrals can form part of a referral spell where they are open concurrently or where the next referral opens within 5 days of the previous referral ending. A spell is closed when the last referral is recorded as closed (using the service discharge date).

Only referrals which fall within the inclusion and exclusion criteria will make up the referral spell. Where a person has other open referrals within the same provider that are not in scope for either of the two pathways, these referrals will not be included in the spell.

Data which utilises the referral spell methodology will be published in a separate CSV file in the Mental Health Monthly Statistics publication and also will be denoted by Metric IDs that begin with “MRS”.

Full details can be found in the methodological change notice here

From November 2024 data onwards, some small changes to the methodology have been introduced. These include: 

  1. Incorporating REFERRAL REJECTION DATE and REFERRAL CLOSURE DATE in the referral-spell derivation section where SERVICE DISCHARGE DATE is not available.
  2. Depreciated crisis team type codes have been excluded from the CYP metric, excluding historic referrals with a team type of either A03 (Crisis Resolution Team) or A04 (Home Treatment Service).

Capturing of digital providers data for CYP Outcomes

NHS England is aware that some digital providers are flowing Outcomes data. Currently, the methodology used makes no attempt to account for the differences in these provider’s data.

In these cases, data supplied is often insufficient to derive a consistent Person ID. As a result, the data is not truly reflective of this activity as only instances where paired scores occurred in the same month would be captured. Consequently, the paired score was not necessarily the first and last scores in the persons referral. If a provider captures sufficient data to derive a consistent Person ID, there should be no issue in the data.

Work is ongoing to determine the best way to handle digital provider data within the CYP Outcomes metrics. Any future changes will be pre-announced through a methodological change notice.



Last edited: 28 January 2025 2:55 pm