The Modern Outpatient: A Collaborative Approach 2017-2020

Annex 6: Mental Health Access Improvement Programme

The Mental Health Access Improvement Programme

The Improvement Programme is delivered by Healthcare Improvement Scotland in partnership with Information Services Division of National Services Scotland Further support is available to boards for the development of the mental health workforce to enhance supply and training of workforce to deliver evidence-based therapies, delivered by NHS Education for Scotland.

Background:

The Mental Health Access Improvement Programme was developed to help health boards to reduce waiting times for psychological therapies and child adolescent mental health services. The Programme is working with health boards to support them to meet the Scottish Government's standard that 90% of patients should be seen within 18 weeks whilst maintaining or improving others dimensions of quality.

The Improvement Programme was included in the comprehensive package of support for mental health services announced by the FM in January 2016. This additional investment will improve access to psychological therapies for all ages including for children and adolescents' mental health services.

The Improvement Programme is delivered by Healthcare Improvement Scotland (£4.8m Scottish Government (SG) funding) in partnership with Information Services Division of National Services Scotland (see below). Further support is available to boards for the development of the mental health workforce to enhance supply and training of workforce to deliver evidence-based therapies, delivered by NHS Education for Scotland (£24.6m SG funding).

The Mental Health Access Improvement Support Team (MHAIST) will work in partnership with NHS Boards with the work undertaken in two distinct phases.

Diagnostic work to identify the enablers and barriers to the Board being able to deliver on improved access for psychological therapies and/or Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). This work will consider the wider contextual factors that may be impacting on progress such as leadership and management oversight as well as specific issues around demand and capacity analysis, staffing levels, implementation of tiered care and whether the process design enables effective and efficient delivery of services. As part of this phase, we will also work with services to capture case studies around any good practice examples.

The output of this diagnostic work will then be used to develop an improvement plan. The improvement plan will include an analysis of the projected rate at which waiting times will improve if the plan is implemented. It will also identify the key risk factors that could impact on delivering the projected improvements, including increases in referral rates.

Both the diagnostic work and the work to develop an improvement plan will be delivered in partnership with the Board and will also support Boards to review their mental health access improvement plans in light of the findings from this diagnostic assessment. The Programme is delivered in partnership with ISD who are providing data and analytical support at a national level and with analyst support for each board. This support will develop and improve Boards' capacity and capability to gather, analyse and report both clinical outcome data and operational management data, e.g. activity data.