Transforming Mental Health Service Delivery
Mental health services are essential for many people’s wellbeing, and access to them is critical. But with a projected shortfall of 18,500 mental health nurses by 2030 and 1 in 5 people needing mental health support, it’s clear that times is of the essence when it comes to preparing for a mentally healthy future.
Programs like Head to Health are demonstrating that investment in digital innovation can help alleviate the risks posed by skills and resource shortages and transform mental health service delivery.
Head to Health is an Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care initiative that uses digital innovation to provide information, advice and links to free and low-cost phone and online mental health services for people who are experiencing mild to moderate mental illness.
Canberra Head to Health, which uses CareMonitor to deliver its services, has just become a permanent fixture in the nation’s capital after a successful trial period. The program is backed by Capital Health Network and run by Think Mental Health.
Let's take a closer look at this program, how it’s improving the mental healthcare landscape and how CareMonitor is being used to facilitate mental health care and service delivery.
What Does Head to Health Offer?
Head to Health offers an array of comprehensive services that are tailored to each individual’s unique needs. With the help of their skilled team of psychologists, mental health assistants, nurses, and social workers, consumers can get the support they need as well as information on appropriate local services. Additionally, psychiatry input is available for those with critical care needs.
The Benefits of Head to Health
Head to Health offers several benefits for patients. By providing free access to much-needed mental health services, the program helps people receive the care they need without worrying about the associated costs or long wait times often associated with traditional healthcare providers.
Additionally, this program also provides relief for hospitals that are overburdened with critical care cases due to lack of resources elsewhere.
How Are Head to Health Services Delivered?
Canberra Head to Health utilises a range of CareMonitor capabilities from initial assessment, triaging, omni channel communication with patients, telehealth, patient engagement, decision support tools, care coordination with other services and ACT Health and more.
CareMonitor has built a complex Decision Support Tool to assess mental health patients. Our tool provides a guide to assessing severity of problems based on eight primary assessment and contextual domains.
Four primary assessment domains:
Symptoms Severity and Distress
Risk of Harm
Functioning
Impact of Co-existing Conditions
Four contextual domains:
Treatment and Recovery History
Social and Environmental Stressors
Family and Other Supports
Engagement and Motivation
Mental health services in Australia represent a complex array of service types, ranging from population-level services available to all on the internet through to highly specialised services that include short and long-term hospital care.
CareMonitor’s Decision Support Tool helps make recommendations based on the risk assessment to assign an appropriate level of care - from Level 1: Self-management through to Level 5: Specialist and acute service - and inform a referral decision.
Schematic representation of CareMonitor levels of care tool for complex decision support to assess mental health patients.
How can we generate more support for mental health support?
Though programs like Head to Health are invaluable in providing necessary services for those in need of mental healthcare, there is still much work to be done in order to close the gap between demand and supply in terms of quality mental healthcare access.
One way we can do this is by meeting people where they are. There’s no doubt that when depression has a hold or anxiety has you walking its painstaking tightrope, the thought of waiting days and weeks for an appointment can easily serve as little more than another cause for a person battling mental health issues to despair.
By providing online and remote access to tools, advice and appointments, we not only ease the burden on the health services, but we can also provide a system through which people can access support from the comfort of their own spaces and at the times that they need them most.
Support equal access to mental health services
Mental health issues affect us all at some point in our lives and having access to quality care should not be limited just because someone cannot afford it or doesn't know where else they can turn for help.
Thankfully initiatives such as Head to Health provide these individuals with an avenue through which they can get the professional help they need without having any financial burden placed upon them in doing so.
It's important that we continue supporting programs like this so that everyone has equal access when it comes time for seeking out help with any mental health difficulties they may face throughout their lives.
