NHS England has said it will launch a new attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) taskforce to improve care for people living with the condition.
The taskforce will bring together expertise from health, education, and justice, to better understand the challenges facing those with ADHD.
It will also help provide a joined-up approach in response to concerns around rising demand, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said at an NHS England board meeting.
Figures show ADHD was the second most viewed health condition on the NHS website in 2023, after Covid-19, with 4.3 million page views that year.
The taskforce, that will be run alongside Government, will build on work already done to assess ADHD service provision and identify the causes of reported increases in demand, the board meeting heard.
Challenges that will be explored in more detail by the expert group include capacity, medication supply issues, variation in services and a lack of reliable data, NHS England said.
The taskforce will also engage with patients, service providers, Integrated Care Boards, primary care services, local authorities, schools, educational providers, and clinical teams.
Findings from the taskforce are expected later this year but no detail on members or terms of reference have been published yet.
At the same time NHS England will continue to work with stakeholders to develop a national ADHD data improvement plan and carry out more detailed work to ‘understand the provider and commissioning landscape’ as well as looking at innovative ways of delivering ADHD services.
Ms Pritchard said: ‘NHS staff across the country are working hard to ensure all patients requiring assessments and further support from ADHD services are seen as promptly as possible.
‘We have recognised that that more needs to be done to ensure people can get a timely diagnosis and importantly, that all of their needs are addressed.
‘This is a hugely complex piece of work and this taskforce will need to consult a wide range of partner and experts, to understand more about the issues impacting those with ADHD and how service provision can be better joined up to meet people’s needs today and in the future.’
NHS England chief delivery officer Steve Russell, said important work into investigating challenges in ADHD service provision had already begun.
‘Using the findings from the initial review, we will improve data collection to help us understand the scale of the challenge and work closely with the new cross-sector taskforce to improve pathways for patients with ADHD.’
More useless money wasting activities – in my area adult patients referred in March 2019 are now being offered appointments to be seen.
More money into increasing appointments and solving backlogs would be more useful. Or a blanket honest answer from DOH – no-one cares if you think you have ADHD/Autism and were missed as a child – you got this far, so join the infinite queue.