Hospitals struggle to integrate physical and mental healthcare, inquiry finds

Hospitals find it difficult to integrate physical and mental healthcare in people with mental health conditions who are admitted with a physical illness, an inquiry has found.1

Lesley Regan, chair of the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD), which carried out the review, explained, “This is the first time anyone has critically examined the way physicians and surgeons respond to the mental health disorders of patients admitted to acute general hospitals for management of their coexisting physical ill health.

“I suspect that many clinicians . . . will be surprised by the magnitude of the problem. Opportunities to identify patients with dual pathology are regularly missed. For example, only half of those patients who would have benefited from a referral to liaison psychiatry received one from the …