Matthew Offord – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Matthew Offord on 2015-11-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for disparities between clinical commissioning groups in achieving the recovery target for mental health patients who have received NHS treatment.

Alistair Burt

NHS England monitors clinical commissioning groups’ (CCGs) performance against the recovery target for people who have received psychological therapies through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme.

The Department is working closely with NHS England to reduce the variation in recovery rates across CCG areas. Key factors that have been identified are variation in data quality, waiting times, numbers of sessions completed by patients, leadership and supervision of services and particular challenges in areas with high deprivation.

NHS England is working with good performers and is analysing data from the IAPT programme to better understand factors that impact on recovery performance.

NHS England is also supporting lowest performing IAPT providers to improve their recovery rates and is offering workshops to spread good practice to all commissioners and providers.