Official Statistics

Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services November 2017

Publication of a collection to specifically look at mental health patients being treated outside their provider of usual treatment. Data covering November 2017.

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Details

The Government set a national ambition to eliminate inappropriate Out of Area Placements (OAPs) in mental health services for adults in acute inpatient care by 2020-21. Inappropriate OAPs are where patients are sent out of area because no bed is available for them locally which can delay their recovery. It is essential to introduce a collection of OAPs data in order to monitor progress towards achieving the ambition and to understand where and why OAPs are happening.

Having this information is critical to improving patient care and ultimately eliminating the practice of inappropriately sending patients out of area to receive acute inpatient care. This collection is for providers in England only. This report is being published as Experimental Statistics in order to get user feedback, show some detailed breakdowns for where data have been submitted and improve providers’ data quality.

Published 19 January 2018