Medibank reports soaring demand for mental health care

Medibank covered about $5.5 million worth of mental health care in the first three months of an initiative to increasing access.

Medibank chief executive Craig Drummond: ’There is a fundamental underlying issue in the community that we need to address.’ Picture: Aaron Francis

Health insurance giant Medibank covered about $5.5 million worth of mental health care in the first three months of a federal government initiative aimed at increasing access to help for sufferers of mental health problems.

New data released by Medibank showed that since customers had been able to upgrade their health insurance to immediately access mental health care it had covered 7900 hospital days for 348 customers.

An additional 284 customers also applied for the waiver but may not yet have claimed.

Medibank chief executive Craig Drummond said the insurer’s mental health claims over an extended period of time had been growing in mid to high-single digits.

“When you see those growth rates it does put into perspective that there is a fundamental underlying issue in the community that we need to address,” he said.

Mr Drummond added that mental health was a wider healthcare issue, not just an insurance issue.

“These numbers point out a critical community issue that has to continue to be invested in,” he said. “These numbers are meaningful numbers for one player but across the whole industry they are quite meaningful.”

$2.89 Medibank closed up 4¢ p

Under the change introduced by the federal government on April 1 this year, customers on basic or medium-level hospital products who have served their waiting period for limited mental health cover are able to upgrade their policy and access higher benefits for included in-hospital mental health services without serving the standard two-month waiting period.

Mr Drummond said the waiver had enabled Medibank to provide quick access to care, with a median of four days between customers using the waiver and their hospital admission.

“We know this support was important because the average length of stay in hospital for these customers was 22 days,” he said. “If you’re diagnosed with a mental health condition, it is not OK to wait two months to get care.”

One in five Australians experience a mental health condition each year and almost one in two will experience a mental health condition at some point.

Psychiatry is the top claim for Medibank customers in their 20s and is in the top five for all age groups.

Medibank outlined that the most common mental health claim was from female customers aged between 20-49 years old, living in a metro region.

Mr Drummond highlighted that one of the issues health insurers were dealing with was attracting and retaining younger people to buy health insurance.

He added that providing the waiver for mental health services added value to the product for those younger customers.

“We haven’t changed our pricing. We have found additional value by doing things like cutting management expenses to fund this,” he said.

The Medibank chief said the public system was also seeing a significant uplift in admissions for mental health services.

“We are dealing with the tail end. Getting to deal with the root cause, whether it’s chronic disease or mental health, is a bigger healthcare and community issue that we need to spend more time on,” Mr Drummond said.

He said mental health was a significant public health issue that had broader social and economic implications for Australia.

“We still have real issues around the mental health space in our community, where there is underfunding and under-resourcing,” he said.

“To make it affordable we need to be thoughtful about how that care is dispensed. As a society and as an insurer we need to look at doing things differently.”