Improving Access to Urgent Mental Health Care

Piloting Initial Response and Universal Crisis Services in Sunderland

Word Cloud from qualitative part of patient feedback

Overview of the Project

There was a clear need to address widespread concerns from referrers, carers and patients around access to urgent-care mental health services. Key issues were the accessibility of the urgent referral phone line, lack of equity for older-people or those with a learning disability and undue delay in first contact following referral. This project aimed to address these issues by: Implementing an initial response service with a greater number of phone-lines Introducing a face-to-face triage function for urgent community referrals Ensuring equity of service irrespective of age or learning disability

Results
The service launched on 1 April. The 3-month evaluation has demonstrated: Improved response times - Less than 30 minutes for a face to face triage and halving the time for Crisis Assessment The referral line was answered on more than 99% of calls (previously less than 50%) Scaffolding implemented with older persons and learning disability specialists to ensure equity of access Marked improvement in response times to A&E - diverting potential acute hospital admissions Reduction in our requests to police and ambulances services for assistance Globally positive feedback from patients, carers and referrers Improved patient safety - through improved response times and avoidance of bouncing referrals

This was a large project undertaken as a key element of Northumberland Tyne and Wears transformation programme, aligned to our clinically led Service Model Review. With collaborative clinical leadership and project management the following key challenges were met: Intensive engagement with service-users, carers, staff, other partners and commissioners. Establishing the pre-existing systems and activity levels Developing an operational model with appropriate clinical expertise Recruiting and training the necessary new staff Implementing the new service by an April 1st 2012 deadline Ensuring an evaluation framework and system was in place ahead of the service launch

The response I received was brilliant

Contact Information
Dr Paul Brown

Consultant Psychiatrist (Lead Consultant for Access and Treatment) pauls.brown@ntw.nhs.uk 01915667337

Leadership Challenges