Examining waiting times for assessments and hospital admissions under the Mental Health Act: A novel data linkage
Delays in assessments and hospital admissions under the Mental Health Act can lead to avoidable harm for people experiencing a mental health crisis. However, it is currently difficult to ascertain how long people wait for assessments and admissions because the relevant information is stored across different systems and routine data sources that are not easily connected.
This project will address this problem by linking two important sources of information. The first is the Clinical Record Interactive Search (CRIS) database, which contains de-identified electronic health records from the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. The second is newly digitised Mental Health Act data recorded in Thalamos’ eMHA platform, which captures information about assessments, detentions and other legal processes under the Mental Health Act.
The project will establish a novel and secure data linkage between these two systems. This will allow the research team to estimate delays in assessments and admissions, examine patterns in waiting times and identify factors that may contribute to inequalities in care.
The project will also provide the technical specifications and groundwork needed to support similar data linkages across London in the future, helping services to better monitor delays and improve care for people in crisis.
Aims
- To establish a novel data linkage between de-identified electronic health record data (CRIS database) and newly-digitised Mental Health Act data (Thalamos database) pertaining to South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) patients
- To leverage linked data to estimate delays in assessments and admissions under the Mental Health Act and to identify factors associated with inequalities in delays (e.g. sociodemographic, clinical and service use characteristics).
The project will generate evidence to support service improvement and will establish the technical framework required for future London-wide data linkage to better monitor delays and improve care for people experiencing mental health crises.
Our Partners
NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre
Principal Investigators
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Research Associate in Health-Related Natural Language Processing
Investigators
Clinical Professor of Public Mental Health
Professor of Mental Health Nursing
Professor of Health Services Research and Inequalities
Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology & Clinical Informatics
Professor of Health Informatics
Affiliations
Funding
Funding Body: Better Health & Care Hub
Amount: £14,544
Period: April 2026 - March 2027