Denied assessment by community mental health team

Hi

I’ve worked in various parts of the NHS so have a bit of an insight into how some services are ‘commissioned’. I wonder if it would be worth your while contacting your local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and asking to speak to the ‘Lead Commissioner’ or ‘Project Manager/Lead’ for Adult Mental Health. You can then ask specifically if your area has a dedicated service for adult assessment for ASD and what the correct process is for ‘accessing’ it.

There are specific NICE guidelines explaining to CCGs how adult ASD assessment services should be arranged and implemented. There will be a specific ‘referral pathway’ which CCGs should ensure is being followed to make sure patients have equal access and fair treatment.

Once you know the pathway you’ll be in a position to judge whether your GP followed the guidelines, if the service you were referred to was the correct one (doesn’t sound like it was to me) and whether your case has been dealt with correctly.

ASD assessment is a ‘specialised service’ so unless your Community Mental Health Team have a dedicated ASD team (I might be proved wrong but it’s very doubtful they do) they can’t have been the correct service to deal with your referral.

Most ASD assessment services will be commissioned to serve a large population area because it’s so specialised (e.g. where I am there are two commissioned services to deal with adult ASD assessment depending on whether you live in the East or West of the county). The staff required to undertake the assessments are very specialised and need to be clustered together to serve the large area. It sounds like your GP might have innocently assumed the Comm MH Team was the correct service.

Try approaching this from a ‘I’m just checking’ or curiosity point of view rather than having a rant from the off. CCGs take patient contact seriously and will deal with your enquiry professionally - it doesn’t have to be a complaint at this stage.

I recently contacted my local CCG myself to get the correct process so I could pass it onto my Practice as the GP and staff had no clue how to handle my request - it was all done very amicably and now my Practice will know what to do for the next person.

I first went to my GP in July and after all the two-ing and fro-ing I just heard this week (end of Nov) that the referral as been sent to the correct service - that’s my experience as an NHS insider so I hope this gives you a bit of a short cut through NHS processes.

P.S. the reason I’ve put some phrases in inverted commas is because they are all NHS-speak which will mean things to CCG staff

Best wishes

Hi

I’ve worked in various parts of the NHS so have a bit of an insight into how some services are ‘commissioned’. I wonder if it would be worth your while contacting your local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and asking to speak to the ‘Lead Commissioner’ or ‘Project Manager/Lead’ for Adult Mental Health. You can then ask specifically if your area has a dedicated service for adult assessment for ASD and what the correct process is for ‘accessing’ it.

There are specific NICE guidelines explaining to CCGs how adult ASD assessment services should be arranged and implemented. There will be a specific ‘referral pathway’ which CCGs should ensure is being followed to make sure patients have equal access and fair treatment.

Once you know the pathway you’ll be in a position to judge whether your GP followed the guidelines, if the service you were referred to was the correct one (doesn’t sound like it was to me) and whether your case has been dealt with correctly.

ASD assessment is a ‘specialised service’ so unless your Community Mental Health Team have a dedicated ASD team (I might be proved wrong but it’s very doubtful they do) they can’t have been the correct service to deal with your referral.

Most ASD assessment services will be commissioned to serve a large population area because it’s so specialised (e.g. where I am there are two commissioned services to deal with adult ASD assessment depending on whether you live in the East or West of the county). The staff required to undertake the assessments are very specialised and need to be clustered together to serve the large area. It sounds like your GP might have innocently assumed the Comm MH Team was the correct service.

Try approaching this from a ‘I’m just checking’ or curiosity point of view rather than having a rant from the off. CCGs take patient contact seriously and will deal with your enquiry professionally - it doesn’t have to be a complaint at this stage.

I recently contacted my local CCG myself to get the correct process so I could pass it onto my Practice as the GP and staff had no clue how to handle my request - it was all done very amicably and now my Practice will know what to do for the next person.

I first went to my GP in July and after all the two-ing and fro-ing I just heard this week (end of Nov) that the referral as been sent to the correct service - that’s my experience as an NHS insider so I hope this gives you a bit of a short cut through NHS processes.

P.S. the reason I’ve put some phrases in inverted commas is because they are all NHS-speak which will mean things to CCG staff

Best wishes

ItsMyMind said:

CCGs take patient contact seriously and will deal with your enquiry professionally

Unless their approached for a continuing health care assessment...in that case ive heard them get more than one person off the phone in a not very professional manner.  They probably think oh dear someone wants free help and its going to cost us so pass them back to social services to pay for their care (even if there obviously non social related)