Urgent and emergency mental health care pathways: Guidance for improving data quality in the Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS)

This guidance is aimed at people and organisations involved in the collection and submission of Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) data including

• information managers, developers and analysts within organisations providing NHS funded urgent and emergency community mental health services and urgent and emergency liaison mental health services
• operational managers, service managers and clinical leads of these organisations 
• suppliers of clinical or administrative IT systems to these organisations

This guidance has been developed to support the improvement of the quality and completeness of data submitted to the Mental Health Services Dataset (MHSDS) used in the analysis of NHS-funded urgent and emergency mental health (including both community and liaison) services for all ages in England.

It is the third iteration of the Urgent and Emergency Care Pathways Initial Data Quality Guidance. It has been updated following engagement and feedback from the systems. It will be superseded as and when further analysis and engagement identifies other areas of focus. 

It was originally published ahead of the implementation of v5.0 and now v6.0 of the Mental Health Services Dataset to support implementation of the changes introduced. See submitting Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS) data for more submission dates.

In 2021, NHS England announced new proposals to introduction waiting times for urgent mental health services. A critical component of implementing these standards in the future is accurately measuring overall activity, triaging clinical response priority, and recording waiting times in community-based crisis services. Currently, these data points are poorly recorded by most mental health providers.

This guidance seeks to enhance data quality over the next few years, preparing for the formal introduction of the standards once they receive government approval. It also clarifies data reporting requirements across urgent and emergency mental health care pathways. Updates to this guidance will be publicised in NHS England’s Mental Health Bulletin.