Coverage/Scope:

State/territory public specialised mental health services.

Mental health consumers for which a unique person identifier was not recorded, that is non-uniquely identifiable consumers are excluded.

Methodology:

Reference period for 2022 performance reporting: 2020–21.

Requires a count of individuals receiving services provided by state/territory mental health services in the reference period. That is, consumers who received services in the reference period in more than one service setting, or by more than one specialised mental health service organisation, should only be counted once. No additional service utilisation thresholds have been set for this indicator.  This approach has been taken to allow:

• ‘assessment only’ cases to be included (i.e. individuals receiving only one service contact) because these are regarded as a significant and valid service provided by specialised mental health services; and
• all service contacts to be included in defining whether a person receives a service, including those delivered ‘on behalf’ of the consumer i.e. where the consumer does not directly participate.  This approach has been taken to ensure that the role of state and territory mental health services in providing back up as tertiary specialist services to other health providers is recognised.

Consumers receiving care from services outside their state/territory of usual residence are in-scope for reporting.

The rate for this indicator is directly age-standardised to the 2001 Australian population.

(Numerator ÷ Denominator) x 100

Number of individuals recorded on jurisdictional mental health information systems as receiving one or more service events from state/territory public specialised mental health services (including admitted patient, ambulatory and residential services) within the reference period.

Total population

Service variables: nil.

Consumer attributes: age, sex, Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), remoteness, Indigenous status. Disaggregated data excludes missing or not reported data.

All disaggregated data are to be calculated as at the first service event for the reporting period, that is, any in-scope admission, residential episode or service contact, even if an ongoing event is underway at the start of the reporting period. In cases where a null value is returned, the first valid result is to be used.

N[NN].N

National Health Reform Agreement

State/territory health departments

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

State/territory level

This indicator cannot be accurately constructed using the Community mental health care and Admitted patient care NMDSs because the data sets do not include unique patient identifiers that allow linkage across data sets.

Accurate construction of this indicator at a national level requires separate indicator data to be provided individually by states and territories.

Development of state-wide unique patient identifiers within all mental health NMDSs is needed to improve this capacity.

When data for this indicator are requested, jurisdictions are required to answer whether a state-wide unique client identifier system is in place, or some comparable approach has been used in the data analysis to allow tracking of service utilisation by an individual consumer across all public specialised mental health services in the jurisdiction. Collection of this information is aimed at assessing the degree of consistency between jurisdictions in data reported.

• As defined populations may receive services from a state/territory service other than their resident state/territory, this measure is not a ‘pure’ indicator of mental health service performance but more about service utilisation by the population they serve. However, it is regarded as an important indicator to understand the overall relationship of the state/territory mental health service in relation to its resident population needs.
• Resource allocation based on psychiatric epidemiology, associated morbidity and disability, mortality and socio-demographic factors is generally regarded as resulting in more equitable distribution of resources in relation to local need than funding strategies based on service-utilisation and population size alone. This indicator advances these concepts by creating scope in the future to compare expected treatment rates to actuals.
• This measure does not consider the roles of primary mental health care or the specialist private mental health sector. While people who received care from specialist non-government organisations are not counted, it is expected that the majority of these people will be captured by the activities of clinical services.
• This measure may under-report levels of service access in areas where persons are able to access public sector mental health services across jurisdictional boundaries.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2008. National survey of mental health and wellbeing: summary of results, Australia, 2007. ABS cat. no. 4326.0. Canberra: ABS.

National Mental Health Performance Subcommittee (NMHPSC) 2013. Key Performance Indicators for Australian Public Mental Health Services, 3rd edn. Canberra: NMHPSC.