Priory Forms Groundbreaking NHS Partnership
The Priory Group, a leading UK independent provider of specialist mental healthcare and education services, has entered into an innovative partnership with Croydon Primary Care Trust that will change how mental healthcare services are delivered in the NHS.
Therapists from the Priory Group will work across the London Borough of Croydon in up to 25 community settings including GP Practices, delivering a wide range of evidence-based individual, group and computer-assisted psychological therapies for conditions including depression, anxiety, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias and body dysmorphic disorder, offering over 2,000 courses of treatment per year. The service will provide access to the two computer-assisted CBT programmes recommended by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE), Beating the Blues and Fearfighter, both intended to help increase the capacity of provision and widen the treatment choice available to patients.
Extensive clinical research has proved that appropriate early intervention minimises the need for referral to secondary healthcare services. Priory's clinical services offer Croydon PCT a value-for-money approach that will promptly offer patients appointments at times to suit them and aim to reduce waiting lists for secondary care.
Priory is developing with Croydon PCT ways of engaging those patients who require these services but find it hard to access them. In particular efforts are being made to engage people from different ethnic groups through using translators and interpreters where necessary. This goes towards ensuring equality and diversity in the provision of services in this highly multicultural Borough.
Professor Chris Thompson, Director of Healthcare Services at the Priory Group, said: "One in four British adults will experience mental health difficulties during their lives. One-third of patients who present to their GPs have a mental health problem and they take up disproportionate amounts of GP time. There are a million people on incapacity benefits due to mental illness, which is more than the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits. Yet a large part of the solution - providing talking therapies in primary care - is unavailable to the majority of sufferers."
"Until recently, our therapy services have only been available to those able to pay or with medical insurance policies, leaving millions of sufferers without the therapeutic interventions they require. Today, thanks to this new groundbreaking partnership, we are beginning to make the most of a mixed health economy to address this critically important issue. The Priory Group's therapy services aim to ease NHS waiting lists, improve patient outcomes and reduce the burden on NHS resources in Croydon."
Dr. Tim Crayford, Director of Public Health at Croydon PCT, said: "Millions of people throughout the UK currently suffer from mental health problems that can be successfully treated by talking therapies in primary care and other community settings. Croydon PCT's partnership with the Priory Group offers innovative, practical solutions to a wide range of these difficulties and we are pleased to be setting a new, evidence-based standard for mental healthcare provision that is expected to generate excellent outcomes."
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