Publication, Part of Psychological Therapies, Reports on the use of IAPT services
Psychological Therapies: reports on the use of IAPT services, England - May 2021 Final including a report on the IAPT Employment Advisors Pilot
Official statistics, Experimental statistics
Data resubmission
Please note that this publication was updated on 16th December 2021 to include revised data for some providers. This is following a one off resubmission exercise that took place in August 2021 and covered the data period September 2020 to May 2021 inclusive.
16 December 2021 09:30 AM
Outcomes
Outcomes in IAPT are measured in terms of three measures:
- recovery,
- reliable improvement,
- and reliable recovery.
Recovery
Recovery in IAPT is measured in terms of ‘caseness’ – a term which means a referral has severe enough symptoms of anxiety or depression to be regarded as a clinical case. A referral has moved to recovery if they were defined as a clinical case at the start of their treatment (‘at caseness’) and not as a clinical case at the end of their treatment, measured by scores from questionnaires tailored to their specific condition.
The Government target is that 50% of eligible referrals to IAPT services should move to recovery.⁶
PLEASE NOTE: The recovery rate for England in April 2021 has been affected by an unusual submission event. This was a one-off event by 2 providers (RVN and RVNCG) to deal with an internal back up of historic cases which had become inactive. This caused a large increase in the number of referrals that finished a course of treatment for providers RVN and RVNCG in April 2021. Because these historic cases were dormant, this affected the outcomes measures reported for these providers, most notably their recovery rates which were extremely low. The volume of dormant activity from these providers was large enough to lower the recovery rate for England to below the 50% national target.
52.5% of eligible referrals moved to recovery
Reliable improvement
A referral has shown reliable improvement if there is a significant improvement in their condition following a course of treatment, measured by the difference between their first and last scores on questionnaires tailored to their specific condition.
68.9% of referrals finishing a course of treatment showed reliable improvement
Reliable recovery
A referral has reliably recovered if they meet the criteria for both the recovery and reliable improvement measures. That is, they have moved from being a clinical case at the start of treatment to not being a clinical case at the end of treatment, and there has also been a significant improvement in their condition.
49.8% of referrals reliably recovered
The chart below compares recovery, reliable improvement, and reliable recovery rates across a period of thirteen months.
Consistently, a higher proportion show reliable improvement than move to recovery; this is because reliable improvement only looks at the scale of change, and not whether the referral has moved below the clinical caseness threshold.
Reliable recovery, which requires both recovery and reliable improvement, is the most stringent measure and therefore has the lowest rate.
Each quarter, more detailed data are published about recovery, reliable improvement and reliable recovery. The most recent quarterly data, Quarter 4 2020/21 is available.
For an explanation of the terms used and further information about how measures are calculated in IAPT see the Guide to IAPT data and publications.
⁶ See p16-17 of The Mandate: A mandate from the Government to NHS England: April 2015 to March 2016, available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/386221/NHS_England_Mandate.pdf
Last edited: 21 September 2023 5:15 pm