Project objectives

The Mental Health Aged Care Partnership Initiative (MHACPI) provides community residential services for people with severe behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia and/or functional mental illness. The purpose of the project was to assess the effectiveness of the model and inform further service development. Previous evaluation concluded that the MHACPI model can successfully deliver quality care for older people with severe symptoms within a mainstream residential aged care setting, improving their quality of life, and their access to long-term, community-based care. However, the previous evaluation did not explore whether the initiative is a cost-effective model for delivering services to the target group.

NSW Ministry of Health

Our approach

The study was designed to assess the cost effectiveness of options for managing a cohort of people presenting with a similar range of conditions to those managed in MHACPI units, over a 10-year horizon, with the stream of benefits and costs measured. The study compared four different service models and assessed the costs and benefits of each.

We conducted face-to-face consultations with clinicians to develop the collection protocol; testing the solution iteratively and its integration with existing workflows. Once the protocol was finalised, we conducted clinician training with each HiTH service involved in the study and provided support to site coordinators throughout the study. Data collection was carried out over a two-month period.

We used the scanned data and routinely collected admitted patient data to develop RVUs to allocate doctor, nurse and allied health clinician time, imprest pharmacy and high-cost consumables to HiTH patients.

Outcome

The report considered the additional costs of expanding the scheme and estimated the benefits of doing so compared with the additional costs. It also gave recommendations about funding arrangements to support the service and suggested consideration be given to establishing a minimum data set for these services.

Our vision

HPA aims to be a leading firm in specialist consulting services in the health care sector, offering qualitative and quantitative analysis and synthesis of evidence, providing expertise in statistics and data science, and contributing to well founded and practical policy advice. We aim to deliver the highest quality of services, helping our clients to achieve their objectives, while transferring our expertise and building their capabilities.

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