The PMHA’s antecedent the Strategic Planning Group for Private Psychiatric Services (SPGPPS), was established in 1996 under the auspices of the Federal AMA to address issues related to funding, classification, quality of care, outcome measurement, consumer and carer participation and related topics as they affected the private mental health sector. The SPGPPS was restructured as the PMHA in 2007.
PMHA provides representation and promotion for the private mental health sector. The PMHA seeks to provide a coherent and consistent voice that is not aligned with any particular stakeholder, or vested interest group. After thirteen years, the alliance model continues to enable the major stakeholders involved in the funding, provision and receipt of private sector mental health services to come together and determine how best to move forward on many complex and difficult issues. The Alliance is chaired independently by Mr Phillip Plummer and currently includes representatives from:
The Alliance is committed to ensuring that high quality mental health care is available and accessible to people with a mental illness in a private sector environment that offers a full range of effective and efficient services in a coordinated manner. The PMHA seeks to honour this commitment in several ways.
Improving understanding
Our Alliance is working with the Australia Government to improve the understanding of and interface between the private and public sectors. The PMHA is formally linked to the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council through its position on the Mental Health Standing Committee of AHMAC's Health Priorities Principal Committee. It also holds positions on that Standing Committee's Safety and Quality Partnership Sub-committee and its Mental Health Information Strategy Sub-committee.
Policy
PMHA is involved in the determination of good policy that provides guidance on clinical and funding issues. The Alliance stakeholders work together to formulate collaborative solutions on agreed key issues that affect mental health services in the private sector. That collaborative process, also operates to better inform the policy base of participating organisations. The PMHA ensures that the private sector is properly represented and closely involved with an important range of national policy issues. Some of those have included the Review of the National Mental Health Policy, the Evaluation of the National Mental Health Plan 2003-2008, and the 2007 COAG Annual Report on Mental Health.
Funding
Another major issue for the PMHA is funding reform. Here the focus is the development of innovative models for funding service delivery that are feasible and effective without compromising the quality and continuity of care. One major discussion paper on Options for Funding Service Delivery for Private Psychiatric Services has already been published and several of the models that were originally canvassed in the very early drafts of that paper have now been implemented.
Looking forward, the PMHA has included the establishment a Collaborative Care Models Working Group as a major part of its work plan for the next few years. The Working Group will examine the impact of the Broader Health Cover initiative and the COAG reforms, and look at where further innovations in funding and service delivery might be possible in the new environment that is emerging. The Working Group will also take account of the previous discussion paper and will involve other relevant professional groups including GPs, psychologists, mental health nurses and other allied health professionals.
Practice
The final major area of PMHA activity involves informing and affecting practice within the sector. For example, the PMHA is responsible for the annual review of the Guidelines for Determining Benefits for Health Insurance Purposes for Private Patient Hospital-based Mental Health Care. These Guidelines assist in determining facility selection and appropriate funding levels for private health insurance purposes. The Guidelines can also be of assistance to State/Territory health authorities and their public hospitals in the treatment of Medicare and privately insured patients. Over the past twelve months the PMHA has also been instrumental in ensuring that the private sector has been involved in the current review of the National Standards for Mental Health Services, which is being conducted by the Australian Council on Health Care Standards. Most recently, it was a PMHA submission to the Australian Government on the Hospital Casemix Protocol (HCP) that resulted in the inclusion of an additional data element and clarification of several others.
Other activities
PMHA is also involved in two other complementary activities.
Firstly, the PMHA supported the establishment of the Private Mental Health Consumer Carer Network Australia (Network). Essentially, the Network seeks to improve the participation of privately insured consumers and their carers at the national and local level.
Secondly, the Alliance provides a unique Centralised Data Management Service (PMHA-CDMS) for the private sector. The PMHA's CDMS works with private hospitals and health insurers to put in place efficient systems for the routine collection of outcomes data that enables the quality and efficiency of mental health service delivery to be evaluated and reported on every quarter.