Australian Mental Health Care Classification - Public Consultation No. 2

This paper sets out work undertaken to date, focusing on work completed since the last consultation paper, and seeks stakeholders’ views on the proposed classification.

At present, there is no single classification used for mental health services. Since 1 July 2013, IHPA has priced admitted mental health services using Australian Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (AR-DRGs) as the classification system with a modified pricing model. This is not ideal in the longer term because diagnosis is not as strong a driver of resource utilisation for mental health services as it is in other acute services, and it can only be applied in the admitted setting.

The AMHCC aims to provide a more clinically relevant classification; a better explanation of resource consumption (cost) at the consumer level; and integrated service delivery by spanning all service settings.

This document has been prepared to facilitate discussion and consultation with key stakeholders, to inform the development of the AMHCC.

IHPA values the feedback it receives from jurisdictions, peak bodies, other interested stakeholder groups, and the community as it progresses work to develop and refine the AMHCC and its supporting material, both in the immediate future and the longer term.

Submissions were forwarded to IHPA in a range of formats including Word, RTF, PDF and handwritten or typed hardcopy. In order to make submissions available as soon as possible, most submissions have been published in their original format. Handwritten submissions have been scanned into PDF documents. If the content has been emailed to IHPA the text of email submissions has been reproduced in Word format.