Publication, Part of Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services

Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services March 2020

Official statistics

Publication Date:: 11 Jun 2020
Geographic Coverage:: England
Geographical Granularity:: Country, Regions, Primary Care Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups
Date Range:: 17 Oct 2016 to 31 Mar 2020

Summary

This report presents findings from the Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services March 2020 collection. The collection is expected to capture the details of all Out of Area Placements in England from both NHS and independent providers. NHS Digital is running this interim data collection in the Clinical Audit Platform (CAP) until the data becomes aligned and available from the MHSDS. The MHSDS is the chosen mechanism for the long term collection of this data.

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.

This monthly report of Out of Area Placements should be interpreted with caution, as with the previous reports in this series. The Limitations section sets out these issues more fully.

This month, 51 organisations have participated in this collection, out of 57 organisations in scope. This means that 89 per cent of organisations have participated. The definition of participation can be found on page 5 of the report.