Page 3529 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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Police will provide community safety in a time of crisis, paramedics will conduct a physical health assessment and screening, and mental health clinicians will also be present to provide a comprehensive mental health assessment. This is about bringing a three-service approach and providing a better response when a crisis call is made for somebody in the community.
Again I put the view that ending up in the emergency department is not necessarily the best outcome for somebody in these circumstances. In fact, being in an environment perhaps supported by family and friends within reach of mental health services may well be a better option. We see this as an outcome that will reduce pressure on the ED but also get better outcomes for the people who need our help at a time of considerable crisis.
Mental health, justice health, and alcohol and drug services also have a number of teams that provide interventions with a focus on diverting admission whenever safe and appropriate. That comes back to that point I was making. Some of these include the home assessment and acute response team, or HAART, a highly mobile and intensive service focused on providing brief interventions in a person’s home or other community environment when a person is experiencing acute exacerbation of a mental illness, a disorder or a severe psychological or emotional distress situation.
The acute response component of this team provides a rapid mental health response to referrals provided by the access team. The intensive home treatment component of HAART provides continued acute response for up to two weeks and is focused on avoiding admissions wherever safe and appropriate to do so.
As the Minister for Health has addressed in her amendment to the motion, the government last year established the rehabilitation facility at the University of Canberra Hospital. The adult mental health rehabilitation unit, or AMHRU, is a 20-bed unit. It has played a critical role in managing patient flow and enables patients with barriers to discharge to be cared for in a less restrictive environment than the adult mental health unit, with access to day programs regardless of whether they meet the criteria for rehabilitation.
This year’s budget has allocated funding to a number of projects that will add to and improve the infrastructure and overall capacity of Canberra Health Services for the purpose of responding to Canberrans’ health issues when needed. The mental health budget provided additional beds to the adult mental health unit. Suitable mental health patients will have access at the Canberra Hospital to electroconvulsive therapy, which has significant capacity to change lives. The SPIRE project will deliver a 10-bed short-stay mental health unit.
These recent investments will make an impact right across the system. There is no single solution to the pressures that Canberra Health Services faces, but a series of steps along the lines I have been outlining today will improve outcomes for patients across the spectrum, particularly as I am outlining with a mental health focus.
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