Page 4534 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 26 November 2019
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medical condition before a diagnosis of a mental health illness can be made. This can be due to factors such as alcohol and drug use, people presenting with a physical trauma injury on top of their mental illness or the need to rule out other physical conditions that could be causing their psychological symptoms.
At Canberra Hospital the average wait time between presentation to the emergency department and assessment is less than two hours. Patients presenting to the emergency department with an immediate risk to life are prioritised, while people with less immediate risks to life are triaged accordingly.
All patients that present to the emergency department at either Canberra or Calvary hospital are risk assessed and admitted to the most appropriate inpatient unit for care. If a patient experiences deterioration of mental state while in a general ward, they are assessed by the mental health clinical liaison team and, if required, are transferred to the acute mental health unit.
In 2018-19 the journey of a person with a mental illness at Canberra Hospital would consist of an average waiting time of around 16 hours from the time of first presenting to the emergency department to the time of admission to an appropriate mental health inpatient ward. The breakdown of this time was around 1.3 hours in the emergency department waiting area, an average of 3.6 hours of assessment time by medical staff in the emergency department, and an average of 11.2 hours until they are admitted to a mental health ward. This 11.2 hour figure represents what is termed “bed block”. Bed block is measured from the time a bed is requested after assessment is completed to the time the patient is taken to the ward.
In 2018-19 Canberra Hospital experienced an average bed block time of 11.2 hours for people with a mental illness awaiting admission. However, recent data shows a significant improvement. For the period July to October 2019, compared with the same period in 2018, there has been a 24 per cent, or one hour and 49 minutes, reduction in bed block, despite a five per cent increase in admissions.
The location of the adult mental health unit means transport needs to be arranged to safely transfer patients from the main hospital to the adult mental health unit. This is either by the adult mental health unit vehicle or via an ambulance transfer if the person has been sedated. Ambulance transfers can contribute to the delay in timely transfer of patients.
It is important to recognise that even though there has been a significant increase in mental health emergency department presentations resulting in admissions, in 2014-15 there were 692 presentations, whereas in 2018-19 there were 1,645 presentations resulting in admissions. Despite these increases in presentations, the ACT Health Directorate’s data shows that since 2014-15 there has been a 42.7 per cent decrease in waiting times for people with a mental illness and a 36.9 per cent decrease in waiting times for people with a serious mental illness.
Several strategies have been introduced over the past six months to assist with reducing the wait times further by increasing capacity across the system. These measures include the establishment of a patient flow coordinator role, which provides
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