3 March 2020
Information Rights & Compliance Team
99 Waverley Road
St Albans
Hertfordshire
AL3 5TL
Tel: 01727 804954
Email
: xxxx.xxx@xxx.xxx
Our Ref: FOI/03529
Thank you for your request concerning Liaison Psychiatry Services.
Your request has been considered and processed in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom
of Information (FOI) Act 2000.
1.
At which general hospital(s) does your Trust provide liaison psychiatry services?
Watford General Hospital
Lister Hospital Stevenage
For each of the above hospitals, please answer the questions below:
2.
Is there a written policy about prioritising patients who have been referred to liaison
psychiatry, or determining which referrals to accept? (If No, please move to Question 6).
Watford and Lister A&E’s have Mental Health Triage Tools. They can use these to inform the
referrals discussion with the Mental Health Liaison Team (MHLT) Assessor.
The MHLT have an operational policy.
Response times for A&E are that the MHLT respond within 1 hour of referral.
Response times for wards are completion of assessment within 24 hour of referral.
Ward emergencies should be responded to within the hour.
Patients can be seen before medically fit but need to be sufficiently fit to engage in an
assessment of their mental health.
The MHLT teams will accept referrals for patients who are aged 17 and above who are either in
A&E or an inpatient of the general hospital.
3.
If so, is this policy made available to all (psychiatry and non-psychiatry) clinicians
working within the general hospital? If so, please specify where (e.g. Trust intranet)?
Copies of the triage tools are held in the A&E departments (Please see attached).
We have also attached our Watford RAID Risk Manage Protocol.
4.
Please attach the policy document if possible. We aim to extract only certain information
from the policy document, so if the complete policy document cannot be sent, please
send the following information:
a.
Details on which locations this policy covers and which patients (i.e. inpatient
ward/A&E/referrals) the policy covers.
b.
Details on any guidelines to prioritise or determine which referrals to accept.
Specifically:
i.
Patients should be medically fit for discharge prior to review
ii.
Patients should be medically fit for assessment prior to review
iii.
No restriction applied; all patients are reviewed
iv.
Any other methods used to prioritise patient referrals (please specify)
c.
Whether the policy states which professional group (e.g. psychiatrist,
psychologist, nurse) should review the referral and/or assess the patient? If so,
please specify.
Please see attached our MHLT Operational Policy.
d.
When was the policy last reviewed or updated?
January 2018
5.
When (if at all) was local practice last audited against this policy and what were the
findings?
Response times are audited on a monthly basis.
We last audited professional feedback for our PLAN review 12 months ago.
Service user feedback is collated monthly.
5.
At your Trust, how do doctors refer patients to liaison psychiatry for review (e.g. by
telephone, by electronic referral system, by email, by fax)?
All referrals are made by phone via a hospital bleep.
Should you require further clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Please find enclosed an information sheet regarding copyright protection and the Trust’s complaints
procedure in the event that you are not satisfied with the response.
Yours sincerely
Sue Smith
Sue Smith
Information Rights Officer
Enc: Copyright Protection and Complaints Procedure Information Leaflet.
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