That the NHS has diverted so much inpatient care into the private sector is a disgrace (NHS paying £2bn a year to private hospitals for mental health patients, 24 April). When I became an NHS consultant psychiatrist in 1992, I had 70 inpatients under my care; when I retired in 2017, I had seven. I took early retirement partly because a psychiatric crisis service without enough beds is dangerous: it is like a surgeon being asked to operate without instruments.
Many clinicians working in mental health are wasting time looking for non-existent NHS beds instead of treating patients. Once in a private sector bed, patients with common treatable mental health problems stay there, as private hospitals lack the multidisciplinary skills that get people better. Also, private hospitals have the perverse incentive that they do not get paid if they discharge patients.
Private sector “care” is a false economy – another example of failed Tory privatisation.
Jeremy Seymour
Sheffield
• I endorse the views of the NHS psychiatrist who said that private mental health hospitals have no incentive to discharge patients (‘Woeful scarcity’: NHS psychiatrist decries lack of mental health beds, 24 April). As a member of a health authority patient review team, I found that they often resisted appeals to discharge patients until Mental Health Act tribunals said that they were fit for “release”. The hospitals were often remote, which made it difficult for relatives to keep in touch, and were very expensive. Mental health is still sadly a Cinderella service, despite the government’s election promises.
Dr Richard Turner
Beverley, East Yorkshire
