People with severe or complex mental illness (SCMI) are more likely to have physical illnesses like heart disease than people without SCMI and are more likely to have difficulties accessing health care. For example, we know that people with SCMI are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at a late stage and less likely to receive the best treatment. The changes to health services during the pandemic likely affected those with SCMI more than the general population.
We want to understand the effect COVID-19 has had on whether a GP knows about someone’s heart failure diagnosis. Differences in the way people with SCMI access healthcare or are diagnosed might mean their GP isn’t aware of their diagnosis, and we want to see the effect this has had on people dying of heart failure and if this got worse during the pandemic. We also want to know who received screening for cancer and heart disease before, during and after the pandemic, and to what extent delays in diagnosis or treatment of heart failure both generally, and during the pandemic, contribute to the premature mortality of people with SCMI.
This work will inform programmes of support to improve rates of cancer and heart disease screening and heart failure diagnosis for people with SCMI. It will also provide information on the best way to identify heart failure in patient records, and determine where in the heart failure diagnostic and care pathways we should intervene to prevent deaths. By studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to care we can identify groups of people that might be vulnerable in times of change, such as future pandemic events or disruptions to healthcare provision.