Question details

(1527) My adjournment matter this evening is for the Minister for Mental Health in the other place, and the action I seek is for the minister to provide urgent funding to expand the mental health unit at Latrobe Regional Health. Each day Latrobe Regional Health has an average of eight to 10 patients waiting in the emergency department for urgent mental health care because there are no beds available. LRH’s 2024–25 annual report confirms only 38 per cent of mental health patients who presented to the ED were offered a bed within the clinically recommended eight hours, less than half the target of 80 per cent. With too few acute mental health beds, patients are left waiting 24 hours or more in the ED. This demand places significant pressure on the clinical teams. If they are unable to find a bed in the already stretched metropolitan network, then their only option is to discharge an equivalent number of patients from the Flynn unit simply to maintain bed flow. This continual turnover is forcing staff to prioritise bed availability over patient recovery.

No healthcare professional should be forced to choose between keeping a patient until they are well or discharging them early to accommodate the next person in distress. No modern mental health system should function this way. This is not a reflection of LRH’s hardworking mental health professionals and management, who are doing their best in extremely difficult circumstances. It is the result of chronic underfunding and neglect by the Allan Labor government. Has the Allan Labor government not learned anything from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System?

As Gippsland’s main acute mental health provider, LRH has just 23 low-dependency mental health beds and six high-dependency beds to service a population of close to 300,000 people. By comparison, Bendigo Health has 35 adult beds, which are part of a dedicated 80-bed mental health unit. This is woefully inadequate for us. My office has been inundated with families at their wits’ end. Their loved ones are acutely unwell, yet unless they are deemed an imminent danger to themselves or others, they cannot be admitted, because there are simply not enough inpatient beds. Latrobe Valley residents deserve better. LRH cannot shoulder this burden alone. It needs an expansion of the mental health unit, and nothing less will allow people in crisis to receive the right care at the right time close to home. More acute mental health beds mean fewer people waiting 24 hours or longer in the ED during the most vulnerable time of their life. Minister, will you fund the urgently needed expansion of the mental health unit at Latrobe Regional Health?