The Department does recognise the importance of mindfulness for improving staff well-being and patient care, which is discussed in the article Mindfulness in Clinician Therapeutic Relationships.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance for the National Health Service has recommended Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for recurrent depression since 2004. MBCT is available through a number of Improving Access to Psychological Therapy services in England.

Health Education England (HEE) supports the delivery of excellent healthcare and health improvement to the patients and public of England, by ensuring that our workforce has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours. The Government has mandated HEE to provide national leadership on education, training and workforce development in the NHS.

HEE has established a Mental Health Advisory Group to promote and enhance mental health training across the professions and provide strategic professional advice and expertise to HEE around its work on workforce planning and education development for mental health. Membership representation of this group includes; healthcare, social care, third sectors and professional bodies. HEE have been advised of the article Mindfulness in Clinician Therapeutic Relationships and to consider it in terms of workforce planning.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Department.

The information requested is held by the General Medical Council, an independent body responsible for dealing firmly and fairly with doctors whose fitness to practise is in doubt.

The Department does not collect these data, and so can make no estimate of these numbers.

However, patients who are on low incomes or in receipt of qualifying benefits can have their travel costs reimbursed through the Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme when attending secondary care appointments in the United Kingdom on referral by a doctor or dentist.

People receiving a benefit providing entitlement to the Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme can also claim for travel costs where the health care appointment has been made for a child or other dependent.

The Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme is part of the NHS Low Income Scheme, and was set up to provide financial assistance to those patients and in certain cases their carers who do not have a medical need for ambulance transport, but who require assistance with their travel costs.

The Department is clear that the most important measure of quality is what people who use mental health services think. There are a range of national surveys which both collect feedback from patients and ensure that it is used in the design, development and delivery of services.

Responsibility for the national surveys previously carried out by the Department passed to NHS England on 1 April 2013.

The NHS England intelligence programme is promoting the use of Patient Reported Outcome Measures and Patient Reported Experience Measures to inform service planning.

The Francis Report highlighted the Friends and Family Test (FFT) as one of the most important mechanisms for identifying poor quality services early. The FFT asks patients and staff how likely they are to recommend a health or care provider's services to their friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment.

The FFT is already being used in a number of mental health care settings. From the end of December 2014, it will be used routinely in all mental health care settings. But we are encouraging providers to start using it sooner.

A range of services, including Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, monitor quality and outcomes through patient experience questionnaires as part of

quality assurance processes. We would expect services to act on this information to improve services.

The Care Quality Commission Community Mental Health Survey provides annual information at both national and trust level. This allows trusts to act on the feedback at a local level and make improvements in the delivery of services.

The Department has not made an assessment of the effectiveness of services available to support the transition of mental health patients from early intervention to community mental health teams.

Responsibility for a number of national surveys previously carried out by the Department passed to NHS England on 1 April 2013. There are a number of ways in which the national health service and other bodies capture patient satisfaction with mental health services. For example, the Community Mental Health Survey, which is carried out annually by the Care Quality Commission, looks at the experiences of people that have received care or treatment for a mental health condition. NHS England is using this information to understand the service users' experiences and to drive improvement.

Also, the NHS Friends and Family Test (FFT) in Mental Health asks people who use NHS funded services whether they would recommend that service to friends and family who need similar treatment or care. NHS England is currently supporting a number of pathfinder sites to further test guidance on conducting the FFT in mental health services. This guidance will be published at the end of June 2014. NHS England is aware that a number of mental health services are already using the FFT to gain feedback from their patients during and after their treatment. The FFT will be live in all mental health services by the end of December 2014.

Patient satisfaction surveys form part of the NHS England contracts with mental health service providers.