Poor integration affecting mental health patients

A new report has claimed that patients with incidental mental health conditions are receiving poor care due to a failure to integrate physical and mental healthcare.

The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) review, titled Mental Health in General Hospitals: Treat as One, has found that only 95 of the 208 hospitals involved in the study had mandatory training for staff on managing patients with mental health conditions, meaning that the majority of hospital staff are ill-equipped to deal with patients with mental health conditions.

Of the 552 patient cases reviewed by NCEPOD, only 46.3 per cent of patients received a review by a liaison psychiatry team during their stay in hospital, while only 57.3 per cent of hospitals involved with the study had a policy in place specifying which patients should be referred to liaison psychiatry. The report highlighted that only 49.1 per cent of patients with an inadequate mental health history taken to liaison psychiatry during consultant review.

Despite repeated calls to place mental health care on par with physical health care, the report shows that only 11 per cent of hospitals shared complete access to a patient’s mental health records from the community, leading to a gap in knowledge about patients’ full healthcare situation, and emphasising the problem of a physical health-mental health divide.

Dr Vivek Srivastava, NCEPOD clinical co-ordinator and co-author the report, said: “Good care was only provided to 46 per cent of patients in this study, showing patients who had a mental health condition suffered the double-whammy of both poor physical and mental healthcare.

“The systems don’t exist to train hospital staff appropriately in the care of patients who also happen to have a mental health condition, so immediately there is an issue with having the confidence to care for this group of patients. Once someone is admitted to hospital it is likely to expose any underlying issue such as a mental health problem, and staff need to have the confidence to deal with this, and have access to and know how to refer to mental health services.”

Dr Sean Cross, NCEPOD’s clinical co-ordinator in liaison psychiatry and co-author of the report, added: “Our report reveals a massive divide between the physical healthcare and mental healthcare people receive in general hospitals. One in four of us will suffer a mental health condition at some point in our lifetime. General hospitals need to take mental healthcare seriously and understand how to provide holistic care for mind and body.”