Recording patients on extended Section 17 leave
This guidance sets out how to record patients who are on extended leave under Section 17 of the Mental Health Act as they cannot legally be discharged due to specific court judgments.
Introduction
The Assuring Transformation (AT) data collection holds information about people with a learning disability and autistic people who are receiving treatment or care as inpatients in a mental health hospital. This includes individuals who are on leave with a bed held for them. Some patients are recorded in the collection who are living in the community on extended leave under Section 17 (S17) of the Mental Health Act as they cannot legally be discharged due to specific court judgments (Secretary of State for Justice (Respondent) v MM (Appellant) [2018] UKSC 60 and Welsh Ministers v PJ [2018] UKSC 66) ('MM / PJ judgments').
As these people are technically/legally in a hospital setting it is appropriate that they continue to be recorded in the AT data collection, ensuring commissioners and the national Learning Disability and Autism programme team in NHS England continue to have a record of this group of people for oversight purposes. However, such patients are currently included in the inpatient counts which are published as part of the Learning Disability Services Monthly Statistics, and this is not considered to be an accurate representation of their situation.
This guidance clarifies how commissioners should record patients who are on extended S17 leave in the dataset, so that they can still be reported in the monthly publication but are removed from the general inpatient counts thereby providing more accurate public and management information about patients who are actually in hospital. No change is being made to the questions or codes within the data collection.
This guidance only applies to those patients that are on extended S17 leave as a result of specific court judgments (i.e. MM / PJ judgment), and as a result of these judgments there is no other legal framework with which to discharge them.
It does not apply to patients that are on very short-term S17 leave as a usual part of discharge planning, nor where discharge is delayed and S17 leave extended due to delays in legal processes (for example, Court of Protection Deprivation of Liberty process).
Q18b (Is the patient on extended S17 leave (linked to a legal judgment e.g. MM)?) in AT should only be coded Y for this specific group of patients, where they cannot legally be discharged due to specific court judgments. For other patients on S17 leave, this question should be coded N.
All patients who are on S17 leave should continue to be recorded on AT until they are discharged to the community.
Contact us
If you have a question relating to patients on extended S17 leave that is not covered by this guidance please contact [email protected] and copy your regional Learning Disability and Autism contact.
Last edited: 18 November 2024 1:16 pm