Choice in mental health care: Guidance on implementing patients’ legal rights to choose the provider and team for their mental health care

Patients’ legal rights to choice in mental health were introduced in 2014 as part of the drive to achieve parity with physical health and increase patients’ direct control over their care. We know from physical health that these legal rights require interpretation to ensure that they are well understood and work well for patients. This guidance seeks to provide a clear interpretation of the legal rights that is meaningful to the mental health sector, and to support their consistent application.

The legal rights to choice covered in this guidance are:
• patient choice of mental healthcare provider
• patient choice of mental healthcare team

The regulations introducing these legal rights state that:

Patients must be offered, in respect of a first outpatient appointment with a team led by a named consultant or a named healthcare professional, a choice of any clinically appropriate health service provider with whom any relevant body has a commissioning contract for the service required as a result of the referral, and a choice of a team led by a named consultant or a named healthcare professional. This is subject to exclusions set out in legislation.

This guidance seeks to interpret these regulations and set out the principles for how these legal rights to choice should operate. It is important to note that the right to choice does not mean that a patient only has their first outpatient appointment with their chosen provider: consistent with physical health care, once a patient has chosen a provider, that provider will normally treat the patient for their entire episode of care, unless the patient’s diagnosis changes significantly.