Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-12-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to collect information centrally on the proportion of people who received consultant-led mental health treatment within 18 weeks of referral.
Alistair Burt
We are implementing the first access and waiting times standards for mental health to ensure that 75% of people referred to the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme will be treated within six weeks of referral, and 95% will be treated within 18 weeks of referral and that 50% of people experiencing a first episode of psychosis will be treated with a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved care package within two weeks of referral.
NHS England already collects data on waiting times for people referred to IAPT services.
We are working with the Health and Social Care Information Centre and NHS England to make changes to the Mental Health and Learning Disabilities Dataset to start collecting data for the first time to measure, in a consistent way, access and waiting times for people referred to other mental health services. We will start collecting data first on access and waiting times for people referred for treatment following a first episode of psychosis in early 2016 and intend expanding this to other areas of mental health later.
