Psychiatric out-patient services have recently come under close scrutiny. Until April 2005, nonattendance rates at first appointments were one of the performance indicators used by the Commission for Healthcare Improvement (now the Health Care Commission) in awarding ‘star ratings’ to National Health Service (NHS) trusts for service efficiency. This attention has allowed some creative thinking ...

The hugely welcome government-led initiative to pro-actively offer 'opt-out' HIV testing to patients at its clinics and hospitals needs hefty back-up resources to ensure patient retention and earlier presentation.

Out-of-hospital patient transportation (retrieval) of critically ill patients occurs within highly complex environments. Adverse events are not uncommon. Incident monitoring provides a means to better understand such events. The aim of this study was to characterize incidents occurring during retrieval to provide a basis for developing corrective strategies. Four organizations contributed 125 r...

The Mental Treatment Act of 1930, in addition to creating voluntary status for patients entering a psychiatric hospital for treatment and care, provided for the setting up of out-patient clinics at which such cases could be seen and properly assessed by a Pyschiatrist before hospitalisation was decided upon. The Act, as a whole, was an enlightened and forward looking piece of legislation and in...