Number of mental health patients treated miles from home surges by 40%

The number of mental health patients being treated outside their local area has risen by almost 40 per cent in two years, new figures have shown.

Funding cuts and severe bed shortages are leaving doctors with no option but to call care facilities around the country in a bid to secure treatment for patients suffering from conditions including schizophrenia, psychosis and anorexia.

One patient from Somerset was sent to a hospital in the Scottish Highlands 587 miles away in one particularly extreme case uncovered by the British Medical Association (BMA) through Freedom of Information requests.

The doctors’ union warned the Government needs to act to stop patients being “routinely failed by a system at breaking point, with tragic consequences”.

“Being sent long distances for treatment has an impact on patients' care and recovery,” said consultant psychiatrist Dr Andrew Molodynski, mental health policy lead of the BMA's consultants committee.

”There have been tragic cases where coroners have ruled that the difficulties families have visiting a relative receiving care, as well as poor communication between hospitals in other regions and local mental health services contributed to deaths.“

Dr Molodynski said the practise of sending patients with severe mental health problems hundreds of miles away “has become endemic in the NHS”.

In 2016-17, 5,876 adults were sent far from friends and family for mental health treatment – up from 4,213 in 2014-15.

Patients treated in out-of-area beds were on average a seven-and-a-half hour round-trip drive away from home, or 13 hours by public transport, according to the data supplied by NHS officials.

Ministers have pledged to eliminate ”inappropriate out-of-area placements“ for mental health patients by 2020-21.

But Leicestershire, Derbyshire and parts of north London have been left with no NHS beds for female patients in need of intensive psychiatric care, the BMA found.

The BMA said that in 2016/17 the five hospital trusts which sent the highest number of patients were: Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust, Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust, Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust.

Dr Ranga Rao from the Royal College of Psychiatrists said: “Treating patients out of area can delay recovery so being sent away from their local area for care should only happen in exceptional circumstances.

“All health trusts must urgently analyse the needs of their local services and determine how many hospital beds, crisis teams and community resources they have to meet the demand for acute crisis care. Only then will we begin to see sending someone from Somerset to the Highlands as a thing of the past.”

Samantha Nicklin, head of campaigns and public affairs at Rethink Mental Illness, said: “These figures bring into sharp focus the continuing injustices people living with a mental illness are facing. Despite mental health attracting more attention as a political and social issue, it is clear that promises of increased funding are not creating change where it's needed.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: ”Of course it is completely unacceptable for patients to be sent hundreds of miles away from their family and friends for treatment – but that is exactly why we've committed to end inappropriate placements by 2020.

“We were the first country in the world to legislate for parity of esteem and we're going to make sure it happens by reforming outdated mental health laws and with waiting time targets to improve standards of care.”

BMA council chairman Dr Mark Porter told around 500 doctors gathered in Bournemouth that Government ambitions to put mental health care on par with physical healthcare is a “very distant prospect”.

He said: “If your patient has mental rather than physical health needs, the situation is even worse.

”Thousands are shuttled around the country because of a chronic lack of beds. Isolated from their friends and family at their most vulnerable time. Some have to languish in police cells for their own safety, while their clinical staff scour the country for placements and transport.

”Their care suffers when communication breaks down between hospitals, and when they are so far from home. Like the young man whose parents had one day off a week to visit him, and spent seven hours on the road for one precious hour in his company.

“He suffered. Any of us would suffer in those circumstances."

He added: “The Government says it wants parity of esteem between physical and mental health. That seems a very distant prospect. Please. This is not just another target to be fudged and missed. It is a moral necessity.”