Know your rights

If you need to use mental health services for assessment or treatment, you have the legal right to choose which provider and team you're referred to by your GP for your first outpatient appointment.

Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) provide mental health services for their communities. You have the right to choose any mental health service provider in England as long as they provide a similar clinically appropriate service to the one your local CCG provides.

You can compare mental health service providers using the services near you function on this site. To make an informed choice, service providers should offer you the following information:
•the name of the service and the professionals in the team
•waiting times
•what the assessment process involves
•the choice of treatment they offer
•what the service's key values are and how they demonstrate them
•which clinical guidelines they follow and the evidence-based treatments they offer
•what other patients and carers say about the service
•what the quality of this service is, including reports of inspections by bodies such as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and information about patient recovery and success rates

http://www.nhs.uk/choiceintheNHS/Yourch ... hoice.aspx

Wow, interesting topic NM. they never tell you this.