14 Jan 2021

New monthly IAPT data published

NHS Digital has today published the latest monthly report into Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT).

The report includes monthly final data from September and October 2020 and details information on activity within the service, waiting times and outcomes for service users¹.

The publication contains a number of changes from previous publications. These include:

Change of patient counting methodology²
Inclusion of Internet-Enabled Therapy (IET)³ now included in the data

Changes to the patient counting methodology will mean:

Statistics which are a count of referrals or people will tend to be lower using the new method.
Statistics which use historically submitted statuses will tend to be higher using the new method.

The effect on England-level statistics is small.

Internet-Enabled Therapy involves patients working through materials on the internet with a therapist inputting with encouragement, clarifications, and feedback at key points.

People seek treatment through IAPT services for depression and a range of anxiety disorders such as agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorders, panic disorders and social phobias.

ENDS

Read the full report

Psychological Therapies: reports on the use of IAPT services, England September 2020 Final and October 2020 Final including a report on the IAPT Employment Advisers pilot

Contact Information

NHS England Media Team
0300 303 3888
media@nhsdigital.nhs.net

Notes to editors

Outcome measures, such as recovery, in IAPT are calculated for referrals that finish a course of treatment within the reporting period having started as clinical cases of anxiety or depression. The term "recovery" has a specific meaning in the context of IAPT services. A referral has moved to recovery if they were defined as a clinical case at the start of their treatment and not as a clinical case at the end of treatment. For further information see the ‘Guide to IAPT data and publications’ at www.digital.nhs.uk/iaptreports
The Master Patient Service (MPS) helps us increase the amount of usable, better quality data available to support research and planning. It does this by verifying the demographic information contained in a person’s health and care records and matching it to their unique NHS number to confirm their identity. Patients can visit multiple places where they register to receive care or treatment. At any given time, we store the health and care records of individuals as recorded in various systems around the country. This can create challenges, but MPS aims to match the right person with the right record with a 99% accuracy rate. More information can be found in the supporting documentation on the report webpage.
The NHS England IAPT Manual recommends the expansion of service provision into Internet-Enabled Therapy (IET). This involves patients working through materials on the internet with a therapist inputting with encouragement, clarifications, and feedback at key points. Scores taken from referrals having IET are now incorporated into the calculation of patient outcomes alongside those from care contact-based referrals. This will enable a comparison of the efficacy of IET with other forms of treatment. Referrals to IAPT services may be offered a mix of IET and traditional care contacts, and so the first and last patient questionnaire scores will be taken from both to determine the first and last scores necessary for the calculation of patient outcomes.

NHS Digital merged with NHS England on 1 February 2023. The NHS has been redesigned around the creation of integrated care systems, and this requires a redesign at the centre of the NHS in England. Data and technology power our NHS. They are crucial to:

working in more efficient ways
improving diagnosis and treatment
understanding and improving our services

This merger will reduce duplication, bringing the NHS’s national data and technology expertise together into one organisation. This will allow us to collaborate more effectively and to empower local organisations to benefit from data and technology, supporting the best care for patients.

For media enquiries please email media@nhsdigital.nhs.net or call 0300 30 33 888.