Trust Board QI Story: reducing waiting times at Luton CMHT Psychology service

Dr Timothy Sporle, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, presented some results from the QI project aimed at reducing wait times for 1st appointments in Luton in the latest ELFT Trust Board meeting. The presentation is available below.

The Luton Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) Psychology service has seen a 50% drop in first contact wait times over the past few months, as a result of change ideas put into practice as part of a QI project. Dr Timothy Sporle, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, presented results from the Reducing Wait Time for 1^st appointment QI project in the ELFT Trust Board meeting, which took place on 14 December 2017.

Service user waiting times to first face to face contact was between 11-13 weeks before July 2014. There was also evidence of lack of service user knowledge about the psychology assessment, whilst staff also felt that receiving more information before an assessment could be more effective.

In an attempt to tackle those problems, the team then implemented a Psychology Awareness Programme (PAP) as a change idea. The programme is comprised of three group sessions and allows service users to gain more understanding about the service. Also as a result of the programme, service users are receiving wellbeing advice more quickly and are encouraged to think about their goals early on.

“By the time they reached their first assessment, service users were better informed about the process”, said Dr Timothy Sporle. The team is now focusing on processing staff and service user feedback in order to refine the PAP programme. The project will also concentrate on assessing whether the introduction of the PAP could also have led to a drop in DNA rates for first assessments.

The slides prepared by Dr Timothy Sporle and Assistant Psychologist Ros Humphreys are available below: