Background
The National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health (NCISH) has found that there is a high risk of suicide for people who have been discharged from mental health inpatient care. NCISH’s 2023 Annual Report found that 27% of general population suicides over the last 10 years were identified as patient suicides – people who had been in contact with mental health services within the last 12 months of their life. Ensuring that people are followed up post-discharge is crucial to determining the level of support needed during a mentally and emotionally vulnerable time.
In 2019/20, the NHS introduced a national CQUIN indicator to incentivise NHS providers to follow up all adults within 72 hours of discharge from mental health inpatient care either directly into the community or into non-psychiatric inpatient care. The target was brought forward from seven days to 72 hours following evidence from the NCISH which found that there is an increased risk of dying by suicide on days 2 to 3 following discharge from hospital. Previously, NHS England had published data on the number of patients on the Care Programme Approach followed up within seven days of discharge from psychiatric inpatient care.
Refer to these resources to access information on the legal rights of patients while staying in hospital and what to expect post discharge.
Since 1 April 2020, the operating standard stated that at least 80% of patients should be followed up within 72 hours of discharge from psychiatric inpatient care. It has not been met at a national level since June 2020, when the data first became available.
As of June 2025, only 74% of adults leaving psychiatric inpatient care were followed up within 72 hours; of 6,894 individuals eligible for follow up within 72 hours, 5,064 individuals received the follow up.
Since January 2023 there has been a decrease in the proportion of adults leaving psychiatric inpatient care who were followed up within 72 hours. There was a significant drop from March 2024 (71%) to April 2024 (63 %) which could reflect methodological changes in the dataset: a new version of the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) was implemented in April 2024, including changes to recording of key measures such as the 72-Hour follow ups (for more information, see ‘About this data’).
The previous national threshold stated that at least 95% of patients should be followed up within seven days of discharge from psychiatric inpatient care. The target was consistently met until Q2 2019/20 (July to September 2019), when performance dropped to 94.5%.
About this data
The proportion of patients discharged from mental health inpatient care who were followed up within 72 hours from discharge was calculated as:
- Discharges from adult acute beds followed up within 72 hours in the reporting period, divided by the proportion of discharges from adult acute beds eligible for 72-hour follow up followed up in the reporting period
- Those eligible were defined as having been in an acute bed and discharged, to home or a new ward, in the last three days of the previous month or all but the last three days of this reporting month.
Implemented since April 2024, the MHSDS v6 included “200 - Acute Adult Mental Health Care” and “202 - Adult Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (Acute Mental Health Care)”. The earlier version v5 included only the “10 - Acute adult mental health care”.
The data only includes ICB-commissioned inpatient beds and does not currently include people discharged from specialised commissioned inpatient mental health services, Health and Justice services or prison settings.