We have detected that you are using Internet Explorer to visit this website. Internet Explorer is now being phased out by Microsoft. As a result, NHS Digital no longer supports any version of Internet Explorer for our web-based products, as it involves considerable extra effort and expense, which cannot be justified from public funds. Some features on this site will not work. You should use a modern browser such as Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. If you have difficulty installing or accessing a different browser, contact your IT support team.
Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services - December 2016
Official statistics- Publication Date:
- 7 Feb 2017
- Geographic Coverage:
- England
- Geographical Granularity:
- Country, Regions, Ambulance Trusts, Mental Health Trusts, Independent Sector Health Care Providers, NHS Trusts
- Date Range:
- 17 Oct 2016 to 31 Dec 2016
Summary
This report presents early findings from the Out of Area Placements (OAPs) collection. The collection is expected to capture the details of all OAPs in England from both NHS and independent providers. This collection is running for an interim 12 month period only to allow necessary changes to the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) to be implemented. The MHSDS is the chosen mechanism for the long term collection of this data.
This report is the third monthly report of Out of Area Placements (OAPs) and it should be interpreted with caution due to likely shortfalls in coverage, similar to the first two reports.
The Government set a national ambition to eliminate inappropriate Out of Area Placements (OAPs) in mental health services for adults in acute inpatient care by 2020-21. Inappropriate OAPs are where patients are sent out of area because no bed is available for them locally which can delay their recovery. It is essential to introduce a collection of OAPs data in order to monitor progress towards achieving the ambition and to understand where and why OAPs are happening. Having this information is critical to improving patient care and ultimately eliminating the practice of inappropriately sending patients out of area to receive acute inpatient care. This collection is for providers in England only.
This report is being published as Experimental Statistics in order to get user feedback, show some detailed breakdowns for where data have been submitted and improve providers' data quality.
Highlights
· 46 organisations have participated in the collection which means they have submitted at least one OAP active during the period out of 58 organisations in scope for the collection.
· From the submitted data, there were 528 OAPs active at the end of December 2016, of which 96 per cent were due to unavailability of a local bed (an inappropriate OAP).
· It should be noted that these figures are based on OAPs that have started since the beginning of the collection, i.e. 17th October 2016. Therefore, this report is only based on new placements as of this date.