Safety recommendation
It is recommended that the Care Quality Commission reviews and updates its inspections criteria for emergency departments to ensure equal weight is given to the quality of care provided to people with urgent mental health problems as they do to people with urgent physical health. This would be consistent with its commitment to parity of esteem for mental health.
Response:
This report reinforces how important it is for emergency mental health care to be available to anyone that needs it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A significant proportion of those who attend hospital emergency departments do so because of a mental health problem. This is because people experiencing a mental health crisis may also require urgent medical treatment, as a result of self-harm, or because they experience difficulty in accessing urgent support from mental health services out of hours. They may see a hospital emergency department as their only option.
Last year we introduced changes to strengthen our assessment of the quality and safety of care provided to people with mental health needs during our inspections of acute hospitals. Mental health inspectors now routinely participate as members of teams that inspect acute trusts; including those that have emergency departments. New key lines of enquiry focusing on mental health have also been added to our inspection frameworks and updated guidance, tools and training have been developed for inspectors.
We are committed to playing our part in ensuring a parity of esteem between mental and physical healthcare and continually seek to evaluate our approach to identify where we might be able to further strengthen this important part of our acute hospital assessments.
Response received on 11 February 2019.