The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Your Experience of Service (YES) survey rates mental health consumer and carer experiences of care in public specialised mental health services.
Monitoring mental health consumer and carer experiences of service has been a long-term goal of the National Mental Health Strategy. The YES survey aims to help Australian mental health services and consumers work together to build better services.
In admitted care in 2019-20, 76% in Queensland rated the care they received as ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’, this compares to an 87% score in New South Wales (NSW).
Each survey is also given a calculated experience of service score, which averages the consumer’s ratings in their responses to multiple survey questions. Based on this calculation, in 2019-20, 70.1% of respondents in NSW and 49.5% in Queensland reported a positive experience of service in admitted care.
In non-admitted care in 2019-20, 89.7 of NSW respondents and 92.1% in Queensland rated the care they received as ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’. Again, based on the calculated experience of service score, 81.3% of Queensland respondents reported a positive experience of service in ambulatory care, compared to 80.3% of NSW respondents.
In residential care, 92.3% of Queensland respondents rated the care they received as ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’. Based on the calculated experience of service score, 80.3% of Queensland respondents reported a positive experience of service in residential care.
In both admitted and non-admitted care, a higher proportion of respondents with voluntary mental health legal status reported a positive experience of service than respondents with an involuntary legal status.
However, Queensland had just 3311 returned surveys compared to 22,325 in NSW. The AIHW notes that in NSW consumers are offered the survey at the end of each episode of care, while in Victoria and Queensland consumers are encouraged to complete the survey at a particular time in the year.
This means Comparisons between jurisdictions should be made with caution.
Specialised mental health services are services with a primary function to provide treatment, rehabilitation or community support for people with a mental disorder or psychiatric disability. These activities are delivered from a service or facility that is readily identifiable as both ‘specialised’ and ‘serving a mental health care function’. The services can be sub-units of hospitals that are not, themselves, specialised mental health establishments (for example designated psychiatric units and wards, outpatient clinics etc).
In Queensland, 20 organisations administered the YES survey through their specialised mental health service units in 2019–20. Queensland has publicly reported YES survey data for the collection periods in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019.
Notes:
- An individual consumer may have completed the survey more than once in the reporting period.
- Response to question, 'Overall, how would you rate your experience of care with this service in the last 3 months?
