Mental Health Services: Birmingham
(asked on 26th September 2014) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average waiting time is for people with mental health problems in Birmingham to access talking therapies after being referred by a doctor.
This Government is committed to ensuring mental health is treated equally with physical health and is increasing access to mental health services through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme and talking therapies.
The number of all referrals and general practitioner referrals in Birmingham for 2013/14 to IAPT services and the median waiting time for these are shown in the following table:
Source: Health and Social Care Information Centre
Organisation name | Number of all referrals entering treatment | Median waiting time (days) for all referrals | Number of GP referrals entering treatment | Median waiting time (days) for GP referrals |
NHS Birmingham South and Central CCG | 3,318 | 26 | 890 | 35 |
NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG | 5,135 | 25 | 3,034 | 28 |
NHS Birmingham Cross City CCG | 9,021 | 29 | 3,077 | 44 |
Note: It is generally advised that the median is used as the most reliable measure of average waiting time, as this accounts for any outliers in the data.