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.
• Update on previously unpublished measures
72 hour follow-up measures (MHS78, MHS79 and MHS80) have now been released for Performance October 2020. Data for these measures for previous reporting periods will be published as soon as they are available.
NHS Digital apologises for the inconvenience caused.
• Early release of statistics
To support the ongoing COVID-19 work, Provisional November 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-november-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 Performance April 2020 onwards.
From Performance August 2020 onwards, the methodology for calculating restrictive interventions (MHS76 and MHS77) in the reporting month has been updated to include all restraints that span several months. Previously the measure only includes restraints that started or ended in the month and did not include those spanning more than 2 months. This change predominately impacts segregation.
From Performance September 2020 onwards, the methodology for MHS26 (Delayed transfer of care) has been updated. Previously only the first midnight of a delayed transfer of care within a hospital provider spell was excluded. The updated methodology now excludes the first midnight for delay start date where there is a gap of more than one day within the same hospital provider spell. This is to take into account valid gaps between delay reasons.
Full details of these changes are available in the associated Metadata file.
From Performance September 2020 onwards, a presentational change has been introduced to restrictive interventions csv files to exclude providers with no inpatients.
• New measures
A number of new measures have been included from Performance July 2020 onwards:
- MHS81 Number of Detentions
- MHS82 Number of Short Term Orders
- MHS83 Number of uses of Section 136
- MHS84 Number of Community Treatment Orders
Full details of these are available in the associated Metadata file.