What is it about?
Community mental health has been a bit of a gravy train; waits of up to 3 months. Also increasingly expensive. There are pilots to improve this fiasco; involving liaison services to triage all primary care referrals on the day. The 2 pilots in England (Cambridge, Nottingham) has shown ~ 40% reduction in costs, mainly involving getting rid of referral processing and avoiding out patient overheads.
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Why is it important?
We are expecting increasing numbers of referrals post COV19 involving traumatised health workers and quarantined vulnerable patients and their carers. So, rapid triage (telephone or face to face) essential with the triage worker having access to specialist opinions via telephone or skype (ideally jointly with the patient).
Perspectives
This is new ways of managing community mental health efficiently. No more a gravy train, but all of us will have to work a lot harder but smarter!
Dr Prasanna Nemichandra de silva
NHS Providers
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Practicalities of care closer to home: seven key questions for community psychiatrists, BJPsych Advances, February 2020, Royal College of Psychiatrists,
DOI: 10.1192/bja.2020.1.
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