Community Links in Caboolture – Our role as design and evaluation partner
In 2017, we worked closely with one of our valued partners Open Minds to design and obtain funding for the Community Links in Caboolture (CLIC) program.
CLIC is a community-based model of support for people who frequently utilise hospital services. It is a time-bound, intensive service model, focused on delivering individualised support within a recovery framework. CLIC offers direct access and assessment for patients identified as frequent presenters to the Caboolture Hospital emergency department (ED), and patients discharged from the Caboolture Hospital inpatient mental health unit and support the transition of their care into the community.
The service model was developed to respond to identified capacity issues at Caboolture Hospital. In 2014-15, there were almost 2,000 mental health-related hospitalisations for residents in the Caboolture and surrounding areas, accounting for almost 23,000 hospital bed days. The rate of hospitalisations is generally higher than the national average. Across Queensland, performance data for public mental health services shows that:
38% of mental health-related emergency department presentations were triaged as non-urgent or semi-urgent
average cost per bed day is $995 (up 25% since 2005-06)
13.6% of people discharged for a mental health related admission are re-admitted within 28 days
only 43.6% of mental health related admissions had contact with community mental health care services in the week prior to admission
over 25% of people admitted had no contact with community-based care following their discharge.
Hospitalisation is a high-cost healthcare solution that must be used effectively. There are many people who present to hospital who may be better treated in the community setting. By ensuring hospital presentations are more ‘necessary’ than not, inequity of access to hospital-based services will be reduced.
Ongoing national mental health reforms emphasise person-centred care, recovery and shifting funding to more efficient and effective ‘upstream’ services. Research consistently demonstrates that better recovery and treatment outcomes are achieved through clinical and psychosocial support services based in a person’s community.
“CLIC will enable Metro North HHS to better manage demand for people requiring acute mental health services in the Caboolture area and better support their recovery through community-based mental health services to prevent re-admissions.”
Beacon Strategies worked alongside Open Minds as the evaluation partner to ensure informed evaluation planning, data collection compliance, analysis of findings and reporting.
We developed a structured evaluation framework that enabled Open Minds to measure the program’s key outcomes:
improved access to community-based care for patients frequently utilizing acute mental health services
improved clinical mental health and recovery outcomes
better integration of acute and community-based mental health services
fewer readmissions following hospital discharge relating to mental illness
fewer bed days for admissions relating to mental illness
development of a service model with demonstrable benefits that can be scaled up.
The CLIC project is funded by Metro North Hospital and Health Service (MNHHS) through the 2017/18 round of LINK Innovation Funding. LINK funding is designed to support the design, implementation and evaluation of innovative models of health care and collaboration between the hospital and health system and community partners.