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Outcomes of referrals over a six‐month period to a mental health gateway team
Author(s) -
RYAN T.,
HATFIELD B.,
SHARMA I.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.69
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1365-2850
pISSN - 1351-0126
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2850.2007.01122.x
Subject(s) - mental health , triage , gateway (web page) , medicine , service (business) , nursing , national service framework , family medicine , medical emergency , psychiatry , business , computer science , marketing , world wide web
Mental health policy in recent years has prescribed the role, function and form for services in England. Evidence of their effectiveness post‐policy implementation has been limited to date and minimal guidance has been available on how services should operate together as whole systems. This paper reports findings from a study of referrals and their outcomes in respect of specialist community mental health services following implementation of national policy and its interpretation and configuration at a local level. Findings highlight that gateway workers configured as a team operating between primary and secondary care can effectively shield community mental health teams from high numbers of referrals that they would deem inappropriate. The study also identified the triage role of this service as being crucial to the effectiveness of developing and maintaining care pathways and also in potentially supporting the mental health capability of primary care.