The Private Mental Health Alliance's (PMHA) antecedent, the Strategic Planning Group for Private Psychiatric Services (SPGPPS), was established in 1996 under the auspices of the Federal Australian Medical Association (AMA) to address issues related to funding, classification, quality of care, outcome measurement, consumer and carer participation and related topics as they affected the private mental health sector. The SPGPPS was restructured as the PMHA in 2007. PMHA provides representation and promotion for the private mental health sector. The PMHA seeks to provide a coherent and consistent voice that is not aligned with any particular stakeholder, or vested interest group. The alliance model enables the major stakeholders involved in the funding, provision and receipt of private sector mental health services to come together and determine how best to move forward on many complex and difficult issues. The National Model for the Collection and Analysis of a Minimum Data Set with Outcome Measures for Private Psychiatric Services (hereafter National Model), is being implemented by participating private psychiatric hospitals for the purpose of obtaining information to support improvements in the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of the services they provide. Since 2001, the Australian Government, private health insurers, and over forty private hospitals with psychiatric beds have been contributing the funding necessary to implement the National Model, and to support the PMHA's Centralised Data Management Service (CDMS). |