DOCTORS in Sussex spent more than £1.5million sending mental health patients up to 180 miles away for treatment when there were no beds for them locally.

Between June 2017 and May 2018, the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust placed patients with acute mental health needs in inappropriate Out of Area Placements on around 455 occasions.

An inappropriate placement is where a patient is admitted for treatment at a facility outside of their usual local network of mental health services because there are no beds available locally.

Mental health charity Mind says the impact of being far away from home on a patient’s mental health “cannot be overstated” and could increase the risk of suicide.

Some of the patients sent away by the Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust had to travel more than 180 miles to places as far as Cheshire and Harrow.

Around five patients had spent more than a year on a placement as of the end of May.

The Trust racked up a bill of £1,513,000 over the 12 months to May paying for the care of patients on inappropriate placements, including the cost of extra ongoing placements which began prior to June 2017.

In May, the majority of the facilities that received patients from the trust were privately operated.

Dr John Lister from campaign group Keep Our NHS Public said a “cash squeeze” had left NHS Trusts under pressure to reduce frontline mental health services.

He said: “The private sector are quite willingly cashing in on the gaps left in the NHS.

“These are expensive beds and they are poor value for money as private providers have an incentive to keep patients in longer.

“This is a significant problem and it continues to be very worrying.”

The government has pledged to eliminate inappropriate out of area placements for adults with acute mental health needs by 2020-21.

Mind says this “can’t happen soon enough”.

Geoff Heyes, head of health policy and influencing at Mind, said: “When you’re experiencing a mental health crisis, you’re likely to feel scared, vulnerable and alone so your support network of family and friends are instrumental to recovery.

“It’s unacceptable that people who are at their most unwell and in desperate need of care find themselves travelling across the country to get help because there’s a shortage of beds nearby.

“The quality of care and how likely you are to respond to treatment shouldn’t depend on where you live.”

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the seven Sussex Clinical Commissioning Groups said: “Our mental health inpatient and community services are under significant, sustained pressure and this can sometimes mean we have to admit some people into inpatient units we don’t manage.

“Whilst this means people receive the hospital care they need, it can involve them being treated outside of the local area and sometimes very long distances away.

“We maintain close contact with people who have been admitted elsewhere so we can transfer them back to local services as soon as possible. But the situation is not something we want for the vulnerable people under our care or their families.

“We are looking at how we can improve early intervention and prevention services so that, where possible, we can keep people well at home and avoid the need for hospital admission.”