Victoria’s $1.5 billion plan to expand emergency departments will not by itself solve the state’s mental health pressures, a rural health researcher has warned.
Professor Leigh Kinsman, Rural Health Research chair at La Trobe University, said sustainable solutions to overcrowding largely lay outside emergency departments, including in primary care, youth mental health services and support for older people.
Writing about the Victorian Government’s promise to expand emergency departments and reduce waiting times, Professor Kinsman said investment should be guided by the circumstances driving demand in each community.
“Emergency department data provides a window into unmet community healthcare needs,” she said, arguing that policymakers needed to establish who was attending, why they were seeking help and where they were coming from.
She also highlighted the difficulty of moving patients out of emergency departments when hospital beds are unavailable. Patients can remain in hospital because there is no suitable community care into which they can be safely discharged, she said.
Professor Kinsman warned that geographical inequality must also be addressed, saying people in rural and regional areas had fewer alternatives to emergency departments and should receive a fair share of funding.
Her comments came amid wider debate about mental health services and the management of people with severe mental illness, including concerns that community-based support remains inadequate.
One letter writer said the closure of long-term psychiatric hospitals had shifted responsibility for people with psychosis to prisons, charities and families, while another argued that the central issue was untreated mental illness rather than mental illness itself.
Professor Kinsman’s argument was that expanding emergency departments without addressing gaps in healthcare and community support risked easing pressure only temporarily, while leaving the causes of overcrowding unresolved.
