5th Interim Evaluation Report
11th August 2005
By: Jane Pirkis, Belinda Morley, Fay Kohn, Grant Blashki, Philip Burgess

'Evaluating the Access to Allied Psychological Services component of the Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care program'  This is the Fifth Interim Evaluation Report and reports on Models of Service Delivery: Profile and Association with Access.

The survey showed that there is considerable variability across the Access to Allied Psychological Services projects with regard to the models of service delivery being implemented.

In 76%, allied health professionals are retained under contractual arrangements;  28% thourgh direct employment; 7 % by other means such as arrangements with supervised postgraduate psychology students)

In 63%, allied health professionals provide services from GPs' rooms; 63% from their own rooms, and 42% from other locations such as divisionsl rooms and community health centres.

In 25%, voucher systems are used; 24% brokerage systems; 25% register systems and 51% direct referral systems are used.

The report concluded that the Access to Allied Psychological Services projects are operating under a range of service delivery models which have been adapted over time to best meet local needs. As a consequence, different models appear to be equally successful in different contexts at improving access to mental health care for consumers. Further work is needed to determine whether different models are associated with better or worse consumer outcomes, but in the meantime there is no evidence to suggest that Divisions
should be modifying their locally-tailored models to adopt a more uniform approach.

<< Previous News Item | Next News Item >>