NHS England spent over £10 million relocating women and girls with eating disorders to Scotland due to a lack of beds.
A bed shortage for severely unwell patients suffering from eating disorders meant more than 100 women were transferred from England to Scotland since 2017, the Guardian reports.
The patients moved included under-18s, with one patient’s stay for over a year in one hospital costing close to £250,000.
The toll of traveling hundreds of miles to visit unwell relatives also had an impact, with one mother telling the newspaper she spent hundreds of pounds on petrol to visit her daughter, and had to sleep on the hospital floor after being unable to get a hotel.
The demand for treatment among those experiencing eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia has “skyrocketed” since the pandemic began, with admissions up 84% in England over the past five years.
Dr Agnes Ayton, chair of the eating-disorders faculty at the Royal College of Pyschiatrists, warned that services have been “historically underfunded” with demand soaring since 2019.
She said: “The limited capacity of specialist services and chronic workforce shortages mean that patients are not receiving the vital care they need.”
Ayton said that vulnerable patients were waiting for long periods of time and forced to travel “hundreds of miles from their home” to get help, adding that the situation is “entirely unjustifiable”.
She added: “This would not be acceptable in any other part of the NHS and should not be acceptable in services that address mental health either.”
Eating disorder survivor and mental health campaigner Hope Virgo said: “If someone broke their leg and was sent to a hospital on the other side of the city there would be a public outcry, yet people with eating disorders are being sent all over the country, and as far, in some cases, as Scotland to get support.”
Tom Quinn, director of external affairs for eating disorder charity Beat, said the revelations were “concerning”.
He added: “We know from the people we support that being sent for eating-disorder treatment away from home can be incredibly distressing … being away from home can also make the transition after coming out of hospital much more challenging and increase the risk of relapse."
“While the Government provided an extra £11m in 2019-20 for children and young people eating-disorder services in comparison [with] 2018-19, in many parts of England this was not all spent, and in some areas, less was spent than the previous year.”
The total cost of sending eating disorder patients in England elsewhere was £10.136m between April 2017 and December 2019, meanwhile the longest single patient stay in 2019, 395 days, cost £214,000.
All of the patients were female with a number aged under 18.
The exact breakdown is not known as the NHS did not release the figures saying it could allow the identification of patients.
An NHS England spokesperson said that although demand for services had increased significantly during the pandemic, “thanks to significant investment in community mental health services through our long term plan, we are able to treat more people with eating disorders than ever before – helping to reduce demand for inpatient services”.
