Everyturn Mental Health’s Principal Clinical Lead, Mona Stylianou, looks at the current condition of the NHS’ National Talking Therapies Service and how innovation can be a solution to improve waiting times and the patient experience.
National NHS Talking Therapies waiting lists continue to be a burning issue, as resources are overstretched, and professionals are under pressure to deliver overwhelming workloads. All this impacts patients' health, as they are left to struggle alone whilst facing long waits to access support. Statistics show that 40,000 people are currently waiting up to four months to receive talking therapy.
Overall waiting lists have fallen for the first time since February 2024, but we need quicker solutions to ensure people get the support they need and with a minimal waiting time.
Offering a Solution
Everyturn Mental Health is a trusted non-profit partner of the NHS, delivering specialist mental health and national talking therapy services.
We are one of the most experienced, third-sector providers of NHS Talking Therapies, supporting over 60,000 people each year, and helping people to manage their mental health in ways that suit them.
We’re always looking to improve our talking therapies services to make them more accessible and user-friendly. In 2021, we partnered with Limbic AI to introduce our digital referral assistant, streamlining the process for our therapists to deliver the most suitable therapy for each person.
The same applies to our new National Talking Therapies Waiting List Support Service, combining a dedicated team of experts with a one-of-a-kind pathway alignment technology. Our innovative tool directly tackles issues with long waiting lists, making them more manageable and improving people’s experience – all at the click of a button.
How is Everyturn Mental Health’s Waiting List Support Service different?
As a self-sufficient support package, our Waiting List Support Service is specifically designed to alleviate the burden of overfilled waiting lists for providers of NHS Talking Therapies.
Our self-sufficient team of therapists, who adhere to the NICE guidelines and the NHS Talking Therapies manual, ensure clinical oversight and supervision, use innovative technology, and provide onward referrals and signposting, along with full-service administration, monitoring of the service performance, and reporting.
What truly makes our Waiting List Support Service different is our groundbreaking Pathway Alignment Tool (PAT). The PAT is a machine-learning algorithm that accesses millions of NHS Talking Therapy data points and evaluates individual factors - such as risk level, age, ethnicity, and therapy history - to suggest the most appropriate treatment pathway for each individual on a waiting list.
The PAT also significantly reduces the chance of modality bias, ensuring people needing talking therapies are placed on the most suitable treatment pathway. This means they can achieve recovery faster, as they are seen quicker and receive care that is best suited to them.
Following the PAT’s initial evaluation of the waiting list, people are assigned to our specialist team of therapists. A dedicated admin team handles appointments, webinar support, and clinical risk assessments to ensure everyone has a treatment plan in place.
The service also provides monthly reporting and performance overviews, ensuring the work being done is making the desired difference for the team and the patients.
Making a Difference
Our Waiting List Support Service is already showing its impact in rapidly reducing waiting lists and improving recovery rates for people accessing talking therapies.
We were asked to support patients in Newcastle and Gateshead who were waiting 12 months for treatment. Our team contacted all 749 patients who were on their waiting list, with over half of that being taken off instantly, as they either no longer wanted or needed support.
Following initial contact from our team, 86% of the remaining patients started their treatment within six weeks (9% higher than the national service target), and 80% started treatment within 28 days of referral.
We successfully moved all patients off the waiting list within seven months, with our reliable improvement figure higher than the national target (68%) and reduced generalised anxiety disorder scores by an overall average of nine points - all costing less than using agency workers.
The Future of Talking Therapies Waiting Lists
Our Waiting List Support Service and PAT are aligned with the NHS ‘Right Care, Right Person, Right Time’ initiative, ensuring patients are receiving the most appropriate treatment for their needs when they need it most. This means our NHS partners can run more efficiently and at a lower cost.
Through smart innovations like our National Talking Therapies Waiting List Support Service, we have scope to make NHS Talking Therapies work for everyone and ensure nobody struggles alone with their mental health.
For more information, visit our website or email [email protected]
