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Clinical Commissioning Groups Not Listening To GP’s on IAPT – The Chaos of Liverpool

Earlier this month Pulse reported ‘In Liverpool, Dr Barnett (GP) says services last year ‘couldn’t have been much worse’ and ‘GPs did not bother to refer patients [to IAPT] because nothing would happen’. Yet the Liverpool Clinical Commisioning Group in its report ‘Talk Liverpool Contract’ dated July 10th 2018 talked of a steady improvement of IAPT’s performance such that it fell just short of the target 50% recovery rate!  Via my MP Maria Eagle I complained that my own independent study of 90 former IAPT clients showed an overall 9.2% recovery rate. https://www.dropbox.com/s/flvxtq2jyhmn6i1/IAPT%20The%20Need%20for%20Radical%20Reform.pdf?dl=0

The Chief Operating Officer,  for Liverpool CCG, Mr Ian Davies replied simply re-iterating IAPT’s national claims.

It is clear that when CCGs talk to IAPT Managers the discussion is about operational matters e.g number of client’s seen, waiting times etc and never about whether the Service makes a real world difference to patient’s lives. CCG’s have blindly taken on board IAPT’s own metric of recovery and its’ assessment of meeting targets, there would never be such incredulity about a drug. NHS Foundation Trusts ought to be challenging this naivety.

Dr Mike Scott