Concurrent DOLS & Section 2 MHA recommendations

Law and practice Mental Capacity Act
1

Patient admitted for General nursing hospital with little insight or capacity for treatment DOLS issued

Patient when MOFD was referred through for MH assessment

Section 2 recommdations issued

Hospital licence does not allow a full section until a Mental Health bed has been identified

Patient had been waiting over 30 days on a General Ward until a bed was eventually identified, recommendations had to be renewed 3 times

Could the DOLS & Section 2 Recommendations legally run concurrent or did one supercede the other

DOLS still in place to stop patient from leaving hospital

Can anybody clarify the legal aspects of this issue

2

This is a regular occurrence which I need clarity on

3

By “Hospital licence does not allow a full section” you presumably mean the hospital’s CQC registration? I may be able to help on that issue but email me at work, mat.kinton@cqc.org.uk. CQC’s advice for many years has been that general hospitals who occasionally use the MHA should add such use to their registration. It has also taken the position that it will respond proportionally to any hospital using the MHA prior to getting appropriate registration, where this is to avoid patient harm. So it may be that the situation you describe just shouldn’t happen and the initial s2 application should have been accepted: the general hospital may be being too cautious in declining to be the detaining authority. But happy to discuss and look at the specifics here offline. What I say here is in a personal capacity.