News
EDs swamped by patients with mental health illnesses
Friday November 1, 2024
- Mental health presentations at public hospital emergency departments have increased 250% over the past 20 years.
- The number of mental health hospital beds is not keeping up with population growth.
- ED waiting times for a hospital bed have blown out, on average, to seven hours.
West Australians with a mental health illness are presenting to public hospital emergency departments at the third highest rate in the country.
The AMA’s 2024 Public hospital report card: mental health edition shows mental health presentations have risen almost 250% from 20 years ago, when WA had the lowest rate of any state.
Despite falling for the past three years, the per-person rate of mental health presentations to WA EDs is now 125 per 10,000 people, compared to 50.7 in 2004-5, signaling a concerning rise in unmet mental illness within the population. About 70% of those are triaged as emergencies or urgent.
While WA has been consistently increasing the number of specialised mental health public hospital beds, up from 670 in 2007–08 to 799, this increase has not kept up with the pace of an increasing population.
The number of mental health beds available per 100,000 West Australians has fallen from 30.9 to 28.6 over the same period, highlighting the importance of investing in the capacity of our mental health public hospital system at a rate sufficient to cope with population growth.
Mirroring national trends, WA has also seen a worrying and consistent increase in the median time spent in emergency departments.
Patients who are eventually admitted to hospital are spending, on average, almost seven hours in EDs waiting for a bed, more than two hours longer than they did just five years prior.
Ten per cent of patients now wait more than 21 hours in an overcrowded and stressful ED due to under-capacity and poorly resourced hospitals, more than five hours longer than they did in 2017-18.
The percentage of mental health inpatients in WA who saw a significant improvement to their clinical outcome because of their treatment stands at 70%, according to the report, the equal lowest result in the past 15 years.
The percentage of such patients in WA who received community follow-up services within seven days of discharge was 74.6% in the city and 79.7% in remote areas, a performance just below the national average.
The national figures show that patients with mental health-related conditions spent on average seven hours in ED before being admitted to hospital, with 10% of those patients waiting almost an entire day in ED before getting a hospital bed.
The report also shows the number of Australians presenting to ED with a mental illness triaged as emergency has more than doubled from 9 to 21 per 10,000 people since 2010–11, while the number of urgent presentations has grown from 37 to 57 per 10,000 people.
AMA President Dr Danielle McMullen said the latest figures showed the length of time spent in ED for patients presenting with mental health-related conditions was the highest on record in 2022–23.
“The solution to the growing mental health burden on our hospitals is additional resourcing and real reform to the delivery and availability of mental health support at all levels,” Dr McMullen said.
“Without this, we will continue to see the figures in this report card get worse and medical and health staff leaving the profession due to burnout and stress. We need all levels of government to work cooperatively to address the current situation and ensure people have access to care.”
