Initial Assessment and Referral Guidance for Mental Health

Are you seeing more and more patients with mental health concerns?

Is it challenging to know what mental health services your patients need and what services are available?

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, we have good news! There is now an online tool to guide mental health referrals across all levels of treatment intensity, with the goal of improving outcomes for patients and clinicians.

The Initial Assessment and Referral Decision Support Tool (IAR-DST) has been developed by the Department of Health (DoH) to support GPs and other referrers make appropriate mental health referrals and the CESPHN IAR-DST team is offering training in how to use this tool.

Each PHN has been funded by DoH to deliver training in the use of the IAR-DST to GPs and registrars in their regions and remuneration for participating in this training is available. Plus as an RACGP approved activity, there is an opportunity to accrue RACGP CPD hours (1.5 hours Education Activities and 1 hour Reviewing Performance).

Upcoming training dates (including links to register):

Thursday 16 Mar @ 7:00pm via zoom
Wednesday 22 Mar @ 9:00am via zoom
Friday 24 Mar @ 1:00pm via zoom
Monday 27 Mar @ 7:00pm via zoom
Friday 31 Mar @ 1:00pm via zoom

In addition to training GPs, we are also offering training to all mental health professionals and nurses within CESPHN and engaging with the LHDs to raise awareness of this new referral guide for mental health.

Funding is limited so if you would like to receive a one-off GP payment of $300* to complete the training, register for a workshop now.

Information about the training and available workshop dates can be found on the IAR-DST webpage. If you have any questions, please contact us for further information.