Excellence in Patient Care SA Ambulance Service Paramedic Telehealth Clinician Mental Health Project

SA Ambulance Service

Team: Nicola Medlycott

By introducing a Paramedic Telehealth Clinician (PTC MH) with additional Mental Health training and experience within the Clinical Telephone Assessment (CTA) team, SAAS aims to improve mental health consumer experience and mental health outcomes by providing more timely access to mental health assessment and/or intervention, in the most appropriate setting, for a person accessing Triple Zero (000) in crisis.

This will be achieved by providing secondary triage and telehealth assessments of suitable mental health cases pending in the community with newly granted access to various Community Mental Health databases supporting the Clinician’s decision making.

The PTC MH will provide mental health telephone triage services within the framework of the National Mental Health Policy and the Standards for Mental Health Services and in a manner consistent with the stated Vision and Values of SA Ambulance Service.

Aim:

• Improved patient care by delivering safe, high quality mental health telephone assessment, intervention when necessary in the most appropriate location following with suitable referral to care pathways.

• Ensure consumers identified as high risk during secondary triage receive urgent ambulance response via priority upgrade.

• Demonstrate a more streamlined and informed approach to emergency responses through sharing of ambulance and mental health databases and networks. Providing advice to ambulance crews on relevant mental health history, assessments and referrals will support actions or interventions aimed at safety and optimum mental health outcomes.

• Triaging of mental health related calls for assistance to increase (where appropriate) referral to the Mental Health core co-response team.

• Triaging of mental health related calls for assistance to increase the referral to alternative care options, for example, community mental health teams and the Urgent Mental Health Care Centre.

• Achieve fewer transports to hospital emergency departments (EDs).