The Fourth National Mental Health Plan, as agreed to by Australia's Health Ministers, assists in collaboratively identifying priority areas for mental health reform, committing governments to a set of agreed actions.
Priority area 3, which relates to service access, coordination and continuity of care, involves the requirement for rates of post-discharge community care.
Community follow-up is measured by the percentage of separations from a mental health service’s acute inpatient unit(s) for which a community ambulatory service contact, in which the consumer participated, was recorded in the 7 days immediately following that separation.
WA Health describes an acute (specialised mental health) inpatient unit as a service that provides voluntary and involuntary short-term inpatient management and treatment during an acute phase of mental illness, until the person has recovered enough to be treated effectively and safely in the community.
The term ambulatory mental health services is used interchangeably with ‘community services’ and ‘non-admitted mental health services’ to describe mental health services provided to people in the community.
A separation for this measure occurs anytime a client leaves an acute mental health care facility following a planned discharge, or discharge against medical advice.
The rate is calculated by dividing the number of clients followed-up by community services within 7 days of discharge, by the number of patients discharged within the same reference period, which is then multiplied by 100 to give a percentage.
Follow-up of a patient is not restricted to communicating with the patient face to face – it may include telephone consults, video links or other forms of direct communication. For the communication to be included in the calculation, the contact must be relevant to the patient’s clinical condition and not for administrative purposes.