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<p>NHS England will publish new core community all-age mental health waiting time
metrics from autumn 2024, which will encompass activity data from April 2024. It will
cover the percentage of patients receiving meaningful help within four weeks of referral
to community mental health services. Once published, NHS England will focus on improving
data quality, including ensuring appropriate Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine
data is flowed to show when patients are receiving meaningful help. Improved data
quality within community mental health services will provide greater insights into
the frequency and types of therapeutic provision.</p><p>The publication of the new
community waiting times metrics is expected to increase transparency and local accountability
on waiting times for community mental health services. Furthermore, NHS England expect
that publication of the data will improve the quality of the data, so that the Department
and NHS England will be in a better position to assess the costs and benefits of introducing
performance standards against these metrics.</p><p>Systems have also been asked to
focus on reducing long waits in community mental health services and to develop local
plans to support this, including by improving data quality. We will work with systems
to develop an agreed baseline and improvement trajectories for waits over 104 weeks
in autumn 2024, as referenced in NHS England’s 2024/25 Operational Planning Guidance.</p>
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