Long waits for acute mental health care
Patients face ‘’’unacceptable’’ long waits at emergency departments for mental health care, a new survey has revealed.
The Australasian College for Emergency Medicine did a snapshot survey of 65 emergency departments in Australia and seven in New Zealand in December 2017.
It found that despite only 3.7 per cent of patients being identified as mental health presentations, they comprised 25 per cent of patients having to wait for more than eight hours for a hospital bed or treatment. In some cases, patients waited up to 24 hours to get a bed or treatment, the survey found.
However, an advocacy group said faster did not mean better, and quality care and assessments for patients with mental health conditions took time in emergency departments.
The college said long waits for mental health care in emergency departments were unacceptable, discriminatory and likely to lead to serious deterioration in the wellbeing of patients. It called on the Government to address the issue and to urgently increase funding for community treatment settings and other mental health and addiction services.
It also recommended better data collection including reporting all mental health patients waiting more than 12 hours to the health minister and human rights commissioner, increasing mental health expertise in emergency departments and improving space design to better accommodate patients.
The college’s New Zealand faculty chair, Dr John Bonning, said wait times for mental health treatment were worse in Australian emergency departments than here. ‘‘But it is getting worse here. ‘‘Mental health presentations are going up, and up.’’ Rural areas were the worst affected.
He was concerned many emergency departments did not have dedicated mental health staff on site.
‘‘Suicide numbers are double the road toll but we don’t treat this with the same degree of urgency as road safety,’’ he said.
Last financial year, 606 people died of suspected suicide.
Last year, 379 people died on New Zealand roads.