Mental Health Nurse Incentive Program: Review Publication

Achieving through collaboration, creativity and compromise

May 2011

Over recent years we have seen a gradual shift towards funding and providing effective mental health services in the community. This has been sustained in the recent Federal Budget 2011.

When the Mental Health Nurse Incentive Program (MHNIP) was launched in 2007, it appeared to be a promising community-based program which focused on meeting the needs of people who experience severe mental ill-health. Organisations deemed eligible, such as GPs and private psychiatrists, could register with Medicare Australia to become eligible to receive funding to engage the services of a mental health nurse. It was thought that the benefits of the program would be three fold. Consumers of mental health services would get an accessible and flexible service designed to meet their needs and focused on wellbeing and recovery; medical practitioners would get clinical support from a specialist mental health nurse who would be able to spend more time with clients; and other relevant community, health and mental health services and programs would be utilised to support consumers and carers.

Since then, the program has proved to be a watershed for the delivery of coordinated, collaborative primary mental health care. There have been a number of other significant but unforseen benefits. The program has kept many people out of hospital and helped them back into the workforce or other meaningful social lives – benefiting not only the individual, their family and community, but the public purse; and mental health nurses have been able to practise autonomously – having been provided with the freedom to use and adapt their extensive knowledge, skills and experience according to client’s needs.