Mental Health Services: Waiting Lists
(asked on 8th January 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of referrals to NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services waited less than (a) two, (b) four, (c) six and (d) 19 weeks to begin treatment by NHS provider in each quarter between 2021 and 2023.
Answered by
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The following table shows the counts and proportions of referrals finishing a course of treatment in the quarter who accessed services, which also indicates starting treatment, up to six and 18 weeks after the referral was received:
Period | Count of finishing referrals that accessed services within 6 weeks | Percentage of all finishing referrals that accessed services within 6 weeks | Count of finishing referrals that accessed services within 18 weeks | Percentage of all finishing referrals that accessed services within 18 weeks |
January-March 2021 | 146,030 | 92.7 | 155,475 | 98.7 |
April-June 2021 | 157,886 | 92.6 | 168,354 | 98.8 |
July-September 2021 | 156,033 | 91.8 | 167,953 | 98.8 |
October-December 2021 | 145,607 | 90.6 | 158,229 | 98.5 |
January-March 2022 | 146,002 | 89.3 | 160,893 | 98.4 |
April-June 2022 | 148,586 | 88.9 | 164,638 | 98.5 |
July-September 2022 | 154,384 | 88.8 | 171,022 | 98.4 |
October-December 2022 | 145,220 | 89.3 | 159,521 | 98.1 |
January-March 2023 | 153,064 | 90.2 | 166,886 | 98.3 |
April-June 2023 | 149,428 | 90.0 | 163,593 | 98.5 |
July-September 2023 | 153,145 | 89.2 | 168,553 | 98.1 |
Source: NHS Digital
Notes:
- NHS Talking Therapies data are given as a count of patient referrals not patients.
- A referral has finished a course of treatment in the quarter if the referral ended in the quarter with the patient having at least two attended treatment appointments or Internet Enabled Therapy logs recorded against it.
- A referral has accessed services when the patient has had their first attended, treatment appointment or an Internet Enabled Therapy log has been recorded for them.
- Data is taken from the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) dataset held by NHS England. NHS Talking Therapies, for anxiety and depression is a National Health Service programme implemented in England that offers NICE-approved therapies for treating people with depression or anxiety.
- Waiting times data at two, four and 19 weeks is not routinely produced. Data is shown for each quarter from January-March 2021 to July-September 2023 which is the latest available quarterly data.