THE majority of people with severe mental illnesses in Oldham missed crucial health checks last year, CCG data reveals.

Just over a quarter ( 26 per cent) of the 2,685 severely mentally ill people in Oldham received potentially life-saving check-ups in 2020, despite the target for England being 60 per cent.

The pre-pandemic figures for 2019 show that the 60 per cent target was also missed, with just 41 per cent receiving the full range of check-ups that year.

The comprehensive annual check has six elements relating to the monitoring of alcohol consumption, smoking, blood pressure, body mass index, blood sugar and cholesterol levels.The most common check locally last year was smoking, while the least attended was for alcohol consumption.

People living with severe mental illness die on average 15 to 20 years earlier than the general population, largely due to preventable physical health conditions such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes, according to Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust.

Karen Maneely, associate director of operations in Oldham for Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Physical health checks are therefore an important intervention to help reduce this inequality.”

Community mental health and early intervention teams in Oldham help patients with a severe mental illness access physical health screens. The service also provides additional support if patients have difficulty in accessing their physical health appointments at their GP.

Ms Maneely added: “We recognise that we still have a way to go, but we are also looking at services which not only screen but also provide quality interventions for those issues such as helping people stop smoking and preventing diabetes.”

Across England last year, just over 110,500 people underwent the full check-up - around a fifth of those thought to have severe mental illnesses and less than half of the number needed to meet the NHS target.

To combat the problem, the health service pledged to ensure 280,000 people a year would have comprehensive physical health checks by 2021.

An NHS spokeswoman said almost £1bn was being invested in an effort to improve community mental health services by 2023/24, including improvements to physical health care.

A spokesperson from NHS Oldham Clinical Commissioning Group said: "There is additional funding being made available across Greater Manchester to support people with mental illnesses and in Oldham we will be able to use some of this funding to focus on improving our delivery of physical health checks to patients with severe mental illnesses.

“As set out in the government’s White Paper, it has been recognised about the importance of moving towards integrated care systems, in which health and social care providers work together with local authorities. Here in Oldham we are working towards integrated teams based within Primary Care Networks in order to offer patients mental and physical health checks in their local area.”