Guidance
This guideline covers the period before, during and after a person is admitted to, and discharged from, a mental health hospital. It aims to help people who use mental health services, and their families and carers, to have a better experience of transition by improving the way it’s planned and carried out.
The Care Quality Commission uses NICE guidelines as evidence to inform the inspection process.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- overarching principles for good transition
- planning for admission and discharge
- out-of-area admissions
- support for families and carers
Who is it for?
- Providers of care and support in inpatient and community mental health and social care services
- Front-line practitioners and managers in inpatient and community mental health and social care services
- Commissioners of mental health services
- People who use inpatient and community mental health services, their families and carers
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
Next review: August 2018
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or service users. The application of the recommendations in this guideline is not mandatory and the guideline does not override the responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or their carer or guardian.
Local commissioners and/or providers have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual health professionals and their patients or service users wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.