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Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services

City and Hackney Adult Mental Health Referral and Assessment Service (CHAMHRAS) is the single point of entry for all mental health referrals to secondary services, with the exception of perinatal referrals, in the City and Hackney region of London, UK. CHAMHRAS was established in 2013 with the objec...

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Autores principales: Zekria, David, Shah, Amar, Malik, Yunus, Mehta, Deeksha, Alom, Forid, Ali, Amrus, Kennedy-Scott, Charles, Horobin, Andrew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5699139/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29450262
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000014
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author Zekria, David
Shah, Amar
Malik, Yunus
Mehta, Deeksha
Alom, Forid
Ali, Amrus
Kennedy-Scott, Charles
Horobin, Andrew
author_facet Zekria, David
Shah, Amar
Malik, Yunus
Mehta, Deeksha
Alom, Forid
Ali, Amrus
Kennedy-Scott, Charles
Horobin, Andrew
author_sort Zekria, David
collection PubMed
description City and Hackney Adult Mental Health Referral and Assessment Service (CHAMHRAS) is the single point of entry for all mental health referrals to secondary services, with the exception of perinatal referrals, in the City and Hackney region of London, UK. CHAMHRAS was established in 2013 with the objective of providing a one-stop point of referral which screens urgent and non-urgent referrals of adults aged 18–65 to mental health services. This single point of entry simplifies the referral process to secondary mental health services—something service users have requested. It also enables rapid feedback on all referrals taken from general practitioners as well as other sources. The centralised nature of CHAMHRAS has also facilitated the monitoring of waiting times from receipt of referral to first face-to-face assessment across services. It was noted that the waiting time for the majority of patients was exceeding the 28-day target set by local commissioners. Indeed, in December 2014, only 30% of patients were being seen within this time frame. The aim of this quality improvement project has been to decrease the average waiting time from referral to first face-to-face assessment, and concomitantly increase the proportion of patients being assessed within the 28-day target period. The team identified potential sources of delay in the process of handling referrals, from receipt and triage, to forwarding to the relevant secondary service, and have tested change ideas such as the implementation of daily meetings to review referrals and the centralisation of appointment bookings to streamline the processes and minimise delays. The average waiting time from referral to first face-to-face assessment decreased by 34% and the proportion of patients being assessed within 28 days increased accordingly, exceeding 95% in the case of referrals from general practitioners (GP). We have listed changes that we intend to introduce with the aim of bringing waiting times down further.
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spelling pubmed-56991392018-02-15 Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services Zekria, David Shah, Amar Malik, Yunus Mehta, Deeksha Alom, Forid Ali, Amrus Kennedy-Scott, Charles Horobin, Andrew BMJ Open Qual BMJ Quality Improvement Report City and Hackney Adult Mental Health Referral and Assessment Service (CHAMHRAS) is the single point of entry for all mental health referrals to secondary services, with the exception of perinatal referrals, in the City and Hackney region of London, UK. CHAMHRAS was established in 2013 with the objective of providing a one-stop point of referral which screens urgent and non-urgent referrals of adults aged 18–65 to mental health services. This single point of entry simplifies the referral process to secondary mental health services—something service users have requested. It also enables rapid feedback on all referrals taken from general practitioners as well as other sources. The centralised nature of CHAMHRAS has also facilitated the monitoring of waiting times from receipt of referral to first face-to-face assessment across services. It was noted that the waiting time for the majority of patients was exceeding the 28-day target set by local commissioners. Indeed, in December 2014, only 30% of patients were being seen within this time frame. The aim of this quality improvement project has been to decrease the average waiting time from referral to first face-to-face assessment, and concomitantly increase the proportion of patients being assessed within the 28-day target period. The team identified potential sources of delay in the process of handling referrals, from receipt and triage, to forwarding to the relevant secondary service, and have tested change ideas such as the implementation of daily meetings to review referrals and the centralisation of appointment bookings to streamline the processes and minimise delays. The average waiting time from referral to first face-to-face assessment decreased by 34% and the proportion of patients being assessed within 28 days increased accordingly, exceeding 95% in the case of referrals from general practitioners (GP). We have listed changes that we intend to introduce with the aim of bringing waiting times down further. BMJ Publishing Group 2017-09-24 /pmc/articles/PMC5699139/ /pubmed/29450262 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000014 Text en © Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/ This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
spellingShingle BMJ Quality Improvement Report
Zekria, David
Shah, Amar
Malik, Yunus
Mehta, Deeksha
Alom, Forid
Ali, Amrus
Kennedy-Scott, Charles
Horobin, Andrew
Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services
title Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services
title_full Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services
title_fullStr Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services
title_full_unstemmed Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services
title_short Improving access to City and Hackney adult mental health services
title_sort improving access to city and hackney adult mental health services
topic BMJ Quality Improvement Report
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5699139/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29450262
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjoq-2017-000014
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