Remote mental health services: a mixed-methods survey and interview study on the use, value, benefits and challenges of a national video consulting service in NHS Wales, UK

Social distancing laws during the first year of the pandemic, and its unprecedented changes to the National Health Service (NHS) forced a large majority of services, especially mental health teams to deliver patient care remotely. For many, this approach was adopted out of necessity, rather than choice, thus presenting a true ‘testing ground’ for remote healthcare and a robust evaluation on a national and representative level. OBJECTIVE: To extract and analyse mental health specific data from a national dataset for 1 year (March 2020–March 2021). DESIGN: A mixed-methods study using surveys and interviews. SETTING: In NHS mental health services in Wales, UK. PARTICIPANTS: With NHS patients and clinicians across child and adolescent, adult and older adult mental health services. OUTCOME MEASURES: Mixed methods data captured measures on use, value, benefits and challenges of video consulting (VC). RESULTS: A total of 3561 participants provided mental health specific data. These data and its findings demonstrate that remote mental health service delivery, via the method of VC is highly satisfactory, well-accepted and clinically suitable for many patients, and provides a range of benefits to NHS patients and clinicians. Interestingly, clinicians working from ‘home’ rated VC more positively compared with those at their ‘clinical base’. CONCLUSIONS: Post 1-year adoption, remote mental health services in Wales UK have demonstrated that VC is possible from both a technical and behavioural standpoint. Moving forward, we suggest clinical leaders and government support to sustain this approach ‘by default’ as an option for NHS appointments.