Ramsay Health Care imports Swedish-style clinics to boost mental health of Australians
Australians have had a love affair with Sweden for decades, from listening to ABBA records to assembling Ikea furniture – a trend Ramsay Health Care is tapping into to lift mental health.
From Volvos to ABBA and flat-pack furniture, Australia has had a love affair with Swedish imports, and now Australia’s biggest private hospital group is adopting a Scandinavian model to improve our mental health.
Ramsay Health Care, a $16bn ASX-listed health giant, has begun moving its mental health services outside hospitals and into the community, opening 11 psychology clinics across Australia, with plans to establish 20 more in the next two years.
It is a model Ramsay has adopted across its Swedish operations, and comes as demand for mental health services is soaring during the pandemic.
The 200 psychologists running Ramsay’s Australian clinics have completed about 10,000 consultations in the past year.
The community clinics have helped keep Ramsay’s 1100 mental health hospital beds for those who are acutely unwell.
Ramsay hopes it can partner with state governments to ease chronic shortages across the public system.
But Ramsay Australia chief executive Carmel Monaghan said a lack of uniformity in the funding of out-of-hospital care by health insurers was limiting access to the clinics. “Unfortunately, health insurers are not uniform in their funding of community and at-home services, leaving whole states or geographical regions without this option. This means that the clinician and patient choices for care setting is limiting,” Ms Monaghan said.
“In addition to this, some insurers dictate clinical program frequency, duration and type that are not necessarily evidence-based. Psychiatric or mental health care is usually only in the highest insurance categories, which can also be limiting for many people.”
Ramsay and British health insurer Bupa are embroiled in a funding dispute that remains unresolved despite their existing contract expiring on August 2. Bupa customers will have to pay potentially higher out-of-pocket fees if the pair fail to strike a new funding agreement.
But, Bupa and Ramsay – which the late Paul Ramsay founded in 1964 when he opened a psychiatric hospital on Sydney’s north shore – share some common ground.
Bupa’s global chief executive Inaki Ereno told The Australian last month that Australia needed to adapt to more flexible models of healthcare – such as recuperating in homes rather than hospitals – to ward off a looming health crisis that threatens to drain the federal budget.
Mr Ereno said Australia could benefit from was the so-called campus model that directed patients to day surgeries, at-home rehabilitation or whatever place suited their needs, “as opposed to just everyone going to an acute hospital and then waiting their turn”. And Ms Monaghan said the mental health clinics were part of ensuring that Ramsay treated patients “in the right environment, with the right care at the right place at the right times, depending on what that need is”.
“With (Ramsay’s) strong background and experience and given the growing need for mental health care accelerated by Covid, we saw a need to extend our mental health service provision beyond the hospital walls and into the community,” Ms Monaghan said.
“Taking our expertise into the community allows an individual with a mental health need to access help before their situation escalates and reduces the risk of an inpatient admission.
“There are lots of opportunities, like we have in Sweden where we run psychology and community-based mental health services.
“You can offer the broader range and you can look after populations more effectively and scale those models of care. That’s where we think the future lies.”
The community clinics offer more than counselling services, providing treatment for all mental health concerns including those associated with mood, anxiety and substance misuse, eating disorders and PTSD as well as psychometric testing for cognitive impairment, attention deficit disorder and other behavioural problems.
It comes after Ramsay, which is subject to a $20bn takeover from KKR, launched a $3m public-private partnership with the NSW government to provide more mental health services to adolescents and young adults late last year.
That initiative involved six new inpatient beds provided by Ramsay Mental Health at Northside Group Macarthur Clinic, Campbelltown to treat young people aged 14-24 for a range of mental health disorders.
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