Mental Health Emergency and Follow Up Information on Discharge from Hospital Emergency Dept Policy

MP 0070/17 - Mental Health Emergency and Follow Up Information on Discharge from Hospital Emergency Dept Policy (pdf 155KB)

Applicable to: This Policy is applicable to Hospital Emergency Department services provided by the North Metropolitan Health Service, South Metropolitan Health Service, East Metropolitan Health Service, Child and Adolescent Health Service, Western Australian Country Health Service and Contracted Health Entities providing Hospital Emergency Department services to the extent that this Policy forms part of the contract.

Description: The Mental Health Emergency and Follow Up Information on Discharge from Hospital Emergency Departments Policy (the Policy) ensures that patients who present to Hospital Emergency Departments for mental health reasons are offered written mental health emergency and follow up information on discharge.

The purpose of this Policy is to fulfil three of the Deputy State Coroner’s Recommendations included in the “Review of admission or referral to and the discharge and transfer practices of public mental health facilities/services in Western Australia” (Stokes, 2012):

• 7.10.4: Where a person has undergone risk assessment in an ED [hospital emergency department] and is not to be admitted to any facility but referred to a CMHS (community mental health service), the person and their carer are to be provided with written advice as to their relevant CMHS and contact numbers and their proposed management plan and relevant time frames.
• 7.10.5: The contact numbers should include 24-hour service emergency numbers and people should be advised that these can be accessed by anybody at any time and trained workers, who have the ability to call out emergency teams if necessary, will respond. These should be a reality.
• 7.10.7: No person should leave an ED without being provided with written advice as to who to contact in case of crisis.

This Policy supersedes IC 0223/15 Provision of Mental Health Emergency, Crisis and Follow Up Information on Discharge from Hospital Emergency Departments and is a mandatory requirement under the Mental Health Policy Framework.

Date of effect: 04 October 2017

Policy Framework

Mental Health

Supporting information

Review of admission or referral to and the discharge and transfer practices of public mental health facilities/services in Western Australia