Prioritise Mental Health Now! The Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies has spoken out about the urgent need to prioritise the treatment of mental health illness in the UK. It is estimated that mental health illnesses like anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and eating disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and eating disorders not otherwise specified {EDNOS}) are costing the economy 100 billion pounds in absence from work, lost productivity and benefits payments. Yet despite mental health problems representing 28% of all illness only 13% of the NHS budget is […]...
When the previous government outsourced some of the NHS’s back office services (e.g. patient records) to the private sector, the government believed it employed 1.3 million people in the NHS. After the private IT companies started collating the information that they needed to implement the new IT structures and systems they discovered that the NHS actually employed 1.5 million people. That means that there were 200,000 people on the NHS payroll that hadn’t been accounted for. To put this in context, Tesco (the third largest food retailer in the world) […]...
Up until recently Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) were in control of NHS budgets, deciding where and how money was spent thus determining the quality and level of service that the public received for both their physical and psychological health. On 21.01.11 the government announced that PCTs were to be abolished and their control handed to GPs. The idea behind this (and one that many GPs agree with) is that GP’s position in the healthcare chain (i.e. on the front line) places them in a better position to determine how funds […]...
A recent report into the psychological care received by patients with Anxiety and Depression within the NHS revealed substantial room for improvement. The National Audit of Psychological Therapies, commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership and carried out by the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Centre for Quality Improvement, collected data from over 350 services and over 10,000 people in therapy for conditions such as Anxiety and Depression. The audit measured a range of standards including patient satisfaction, effectiveness of therapy, waiting times and the number of treatment sessions offered. Results As […]...
