The peak body for emergency medicine in Australia and New Zealand has called for a nationally funded, needs based planning process to address systemic failures in the provision of mental health care in in rural and remote Australia.
The call comes as the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) appears today before a Senate inquiry looking into the accessibility and quality of mental health services in rural and remote Australia.
Dr Niall Small, Chair of ACEM’s Regional Rural and Remote Committee, will appear before the Senate Community Affairs References Committee in Townsville. The Committee is examining a number of aspects relating to mental health services in rural and remote Australia. Public hearings have been held since June 2018.
“All community members have the right to timely, high quality emergency medical care in a respectful environment. This includes mental health care,” Dr Small said.
In February, ACEM released a report which found that close to a half of the people stuck in a rural or regional emergency departments had been waiting for longer than 8 hours, compared with around 25 percent in urban areas.
For patients who are acutely ill, it can take some time to source an inpatient bed in a metropolitan centre and to find appropriate transport to the bed. These factors can exacerbate long and stressful waiting times in the emergency department and undermine the recovery of people experiencing a mental health crisis.
“In many communities, emergency departments are the only option for people with an acute mental health crisis,” ACEM’s submission states. “ACEM members consistently report insufficient numbers of consultant psychiatrists for face-to-face mental health service delivery in hospital emergency departments, and inadequate numbers of psychologists, counsellors and specialist mental health services in rural and remote communities.
“While access to telehealth has been helpful, it does not remove the need for people on the ground. The rates of suicide among people living in rural and remote areas, which are about twice those in metropolitan areas, underscore the need for a well-planned, evidence-based approach to increasing the capacity of the health system to offer 24 hour access to expert, integrated and coordinated mental health care.”
ACEM has proposed a number of solutions to improve models of care for patients with acute mental and behavioural conditions, including mandatory reporting of cases involving extreme waiting times for specialised care. Mandatory reporting to the State or Territory health minister on access block for mental health patients has been shown to drive performance improvements.
Download ACEM’s submission.
Today’s public hearing can be followed via www.aph.gov.au
Contact
Andre Khoury
ACEM Public Affairs Manager
03 8679 8813
0498 068 023
[email protected]