Showing trends in hospital service delivery and identifying gaps and where improvements are needed, this report looks at the performance of Australia’s public hospitals when providing care to patients who have presented with mental health-related conditions.  

This report card allows for accurate longitudinal analysis, comparing the health system’s current performance against past performance. Unfortunately, this third annual Mental Health Edition again demonstrates a worrying decline in both performance and capacity within the mental health departments of public hospitals.

Key findings

• In 2021–22, Australia saw a reduction of 244 specialised mental health beds across the country, coinciding with an overall loss of two public hospitals providing mental health services. 
• Australia has witnessed a long-term decline in the number of mental health beds available per person in the past 30 years.
• There is an increasing number of patients with severe, complex, and chronic conditions, where mental illness may be one of a multitude of conditions.
• Since 2010–11, the number of Australians presenting to the emergency department with a mental illness triaged as “emergency” has more than doubled.
• In 2022–23, more than half of mental health-related presentations came via an emergency services vehicle, compared to 26 per cent of all emergency department presentations.

Recommendations

1. Reintroduce funding for performance improvement.
2. Provide public hospitals additional funding for extra beds (along with the staff) and support them to expand capacity to meet community demand, surge when required, improve treatment times, and put an end to ambulance ramping.
3. Fund alternatives for out-of-hospital care, so those whose needs can be better met in the community can be treated outside hospital. 
4. Increase the federal government’s contribution for activity, allowing states and territories to reinvest the ‘freed-up’ funds to improve performance, capacity and innovation. Remove the artificial cap on funding growth that is shared between states and territories, so funding can meet community health needs based on realities on the ground.