Day 1
Discouraged
I have decided to find out what NHS services are currently available. My plan is to go round the country (via the internet) comparing what treatments are available and maybe produce some sort of graph to illustrate my findings. I’ve chosen Surrey and Yorkshire as my starting points, as that is where the 2 of us behind the project live. I will start with all the County towns, so Guildford and York will be first. This seems to be a good starting point.
I’ve only just started and already it seems like a mammoth task.
I have found a reporting tool on the NHS Choices site:
The first thing that is apparent is that there are only 2 Trusts within 25 miles of York, whereas the Guildford area has 4 (the image shows 2 entries, but there are 4 of 4, they just didn’t all fit on the page). So what does this mean from a population point of view? Something else to think about…..
This report refers to crisis care in Mental Health Trusts. The columns are:
- Bed Occupancy Rate – the proportion of adult acute beds that were occupied by patients. The recommended average occupancy rate is 85%
- Proportion of admissions gate-kept by CRHT teams – percentage of inpatient admissions where alternatives to inpatient admission were properly considered beforehand
- Help out of hours – whether people in secondary mental health services have access to crisis care outside of office hours and whether this was helpful
- Proportion of people on CPA with a crisis plan in place – CPA is Care Plan Approach
- Delayed Transfers of care – proportion of bed days occupied by patients whose discharge has been delayed. A delayed discharge is defined in cases where someone is fit to leave hospital but remains for non clinical reasons
There are other subsections in this category, then another category called Psychological Therapies (IAPT)
Ok, so this looks like something I can do. I’m starting to feel as if I have a plan that is achievable. The no data available entries pose a problem, but I’ll work something out.
Population of York (copied from Wikipedia):
From 1996, the term ‘City of York’ describes a unitary authority area which includes rural areas beyond the old city boundaries. In 2011 the urban area had a population of 153,717,[3] while in 2010 the entire unitary authority had an estimated population of 202,400.[1]
Population of Guildford (Wikipedia):
The town has a population of just over 137,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford which had an estimated 146,100 inhabitants in 2015.
As I thought, York is larger/more populous than Guildford. If 1 in 4 people in the UK suffer from depression at some time in their lives, shouldn’t each area have equal opportunities to get basic, free NHS support?
Ok, enough for today. My plan for tomorrow is to start analysing the data I have. I can ask questions later.
CMHS UK - Challenging Mental Health Services UK 