Mental health trust fined £285,000

By Liz Lockhart

A mental health trust in Swindon has been fined £285,000 for falling short of targets and breaking rules. Whilst it is essential that such organisations are thoroughly scrutinised, surely a fine of this magnitude only makes reaching those targets even harder or am I missing the point?

A news article in the Swindon Advertiser says that the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS trust (AWT), which runs three mental health centres in Swindon, was penalised by £285,000 for falling short on waiting times for diagnosis and treatment.

The AWT was assessed in 51 areas and were found to have fallen short in 22 of them, sometimes by a long way. As a result of the shortcomings in the last 12 months to April, Swindon Primary Care Trust, which pays AWT to run its services, either clawed back or withheld £285,000 in funding.

AWT was also penalised after four patients sectioned under the Mental Health Act went missing in the town. They were hit with a further £14,000 penalty.

‘AWT is committed to constantly improving the quality of its services and a range of activity is used to help achieve this, including agreeing targets with our commissioners, NHS Swindon’ AWT said in a statement. ‘As the Joint Commissioning Board heard, when targets were not met, we are now adopting new approaches in an effort to achieve this year’s targets and we expect to see significant improvements in performance in the coming months.’

‘We are disappointed that we did not meet all targets last year, which was due to a combination of factors not all of which were under AWT’s control’ they added.

The National Health Service Swindon also made comment: ‘NHS Swindon and Swindon council both share, with AWT or disappointment at the level of performance associated with a number of the targets set for 2010/2011.

‘We are pleased, however, that a number of areas have improved throughout the year, for example there has been a significant improvement in the four weeks wait target and pans are in place for improvements to all areas.’

We take seriously the level of performance in and are working closely with AWT to ensure there are more improvements’ they concluded.

Whilst it is obvious that the Avon and Wiltshire Trust needed to be taken to task and made to improve their services, perhaps an alternative form of penalty would have been more appropriate. Let us hope that the loss of this large sum of money will not impede on future improvements in service.