Report: First report published on out of area placements for mental health patients

NHS Digital has today published initial provisional figures from a new interim data collection which captures details on mental health patients being admitted to a unit that does not form part of their usual local network of services.

Readers are advised to treat with caution the limited findings of this first edition of Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services.

The collection went live on October 17, 2016, and providers were asked to submit data for any new placements as of that date, so the numbers in this report are based on only two weeks’ worth of data, with small numbers suppressed.

The figures in this report may not reflect the full picture of the number of patients being treated for acute mental health inpatient care in a unit that does not form part of their usual local network of services.

As this report is based on a new data collection covering a short time period, future figures are expected to become more robust, in order to accurately reflect the active number of placements at a specific point in time.

This report supports the Government initiative to eliminate inappropriate out of area placements by 2020-21. While there are many reasons for an out of area placement, one is deemed inappropriate if the reason for it is the non-availability of a local bed.

Read the full report at: http://digital.nhs.uk/pubs/oapsrepoct16