NWMPHN’s role in supporting the national Medicare Mental Health program

The Medicare Mental Health phone service handles more than 8,000 inbound calls each month from people seeking mental health advice and support. Anyone in Australia can call 1800 595 212 to be connected to an experienced mental health clinician, who can assess their needs and help them get the right support close to where they live.

NWMPHN’s telephony infrastructure underpins this nation-wide service, supporting a seamless experience for people seeking mental health support.

It provides all 31 PHNs with an efficient “front door” into their service networks, allowing each to focus on ensuring every person gets the appropriate care in their local area.

The National Mental Health eReferral Prototype Project addressed long-standing challenges in manual referral workflows, disconnected systems, and limited visibility between general practice and mental health intake teams. This initiative demonstrates how PHNs can work together to deliver innovative digital solutions that improve access to services and strengthen coordinated care. The project was funded by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DHDA) and led by NMWPHN with PHNs across Australia.

The challenge was to build a system that delivered faster, more accurate referrals, ensured secure data transfer and ultimately improved mental health outcomes. A key aim was to develop a solution that could be adopted nationally, rather than each PHN creating their own separate systems. Core values guiding the project were standardisation, interoperability, efficiency, ease of use, and a seamless user experience.

Over 12 months, the project delivered a suite of digital tools, including a HealthLink SmartForm, a back end eReferral Manager, a new eReferral Inbox within the Primary Mental Health Care Information System (PMHCIS), a referral tracking function, and an external webform. The challenge was to build a system that delivered faster, more accurate referrals, ensured secure data transfer and ultimately improved mental health outcomes. A key aim was to develop a solution that could be adopted nationally, rather than each PHN creating their own separate systems.

A core strength of the project was the strategic collaboration between PHNs, HealthLink, intake teams, service providers and national advisory bodies. The Project Advisory Group (PAG) had representatives from 28 PHNs. It and the Expert Advisory Committee (EAC) ensured diverse clinical, technical, and operational perspectives were embedded into every phase of the project, resulting in a solution grounded in real-world service delivery and positioned for future national implementation.

The new system underwent alpha and beta testing – involving three and nine PHNs respectively. This allowed for early testing, iterative improvements, and practical insights into system performance. Evaluation through surveys and interviews with general practitioners (GPs) and intake teams and PHN mental health leads demonstrated clear efficiency gains, and a reduced administrative burden.

Read the report here (.pdf)

The PMHCIS is a centralised national digital platform developed to support the delivery, coordination and reporting of mental health intake, assessment and referral services under the Medicare Mental Health initiative in Australia.

While built for Medicare-funded services, PMHCIS is highly adaptable—and can be used for other local mental health assessment and referral programs with similar workflow and data requirements.

PMHCIS is a secure, web-based application designed to streamline the clinical workflow and support the following functions:

• referral management
• client intake, assessment, and referral
• analytics and reporting.

Key features include:

• Interoperable design – Seamlessly integrates with clinical and reporting systems used by PHNs and service providers via secure APIs.
• Client record management – Tracks consumer journeys across services — including assessments, referrals, and outcomes.
• Real-time data collection – Enables timely, accurate reporting to support service planning, commissioning, and national performance monitoring.
• Mental Health eReferral – Enables providers to securely send referrals into the service, integrating with clinical systems for real-time referral tracking and faster service access.
• Customisable workflows – Supports different service models across phone, digital, and in-person Medicare Mental Health services
• Secure access – Designed to meet the highest standards of privacy, confidentiality, and data governance. Fully aligned with the Australian Privacy Principles and ISO/IEC 27001 certification.
• Standards-aligned and compliant – Uses national datasets such as PMHC-MDS and uses industry standards including FHIR.

PMHCIS in action

A closer look at the system’s core workflows and functions:

Who uses the system?

• Primary Health Networks (PHNs)
• Medicare Menta Health centres and satellite sites
• Service providers commissioned under Medicare Mental Health
• The Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care (DoHAC), for analytics and reporting.

Click here (.pdf) for more information

The consumer experience platform is a digital tool designed to capture the voices of people accessing services through Medicare Mental Health – ensuring their experiences, feedback, and outcomes directly inform service quality and system improvement.

NWMPHN has partnered with New Zealand-based medical software company Cemplicity to deliver the platform. All PHNs and their commissioned providers involved in the initiative have access to a comprehensive and secure reporting portal that enables survey responses to be viewed and analysed in real time.

Why does this matter?

• Empowers consumers by giving them a structured way to share how services are, or are not, helping.
• Builds a consumer-centred mental health system where care is shaped not just by clinical metrics but by lived experience.
• Supports the Australian Government’s mental health reform goals by embedding accountability and transparency into service delivery.
• Provides valuable data for PHNs, enabling them to benchmark performance, share lessons, and design services that better meet community needs.

By leveraging shared infrastructure and centralised data management processes, PHNs have significantly reduced resource costs and eliminated the need to build and maintain local systems for mental health intake management and reporting. For example, centralised processes have improved timely reporting to DoHAC and supports overall evaluation and ongoing improvement.

How does this work?

• NWMPHN has developed a secure, integrated environment that links key datasets and supports streamlined national reporting. The system is designed to work seamlessly with a variety of tools, including Microsoft Power BI and custom-built software developed in Python, allowing for advanced data visualisation and analytics.
• To support flexibility, the platform includes a robust API that enables PHNs not using the web-based application to submit their data for inclusion in national reports — ensuring broad compatibility and consistent data capture.
• The system also supports uploads to the Australian Government’s Primary Mental Health Care Minimum Data Set (PMHC MDS) portal, meeting mandatory reporting requirements with minimal manual input.
• NWMPHN’s in-house technical team has established a customisable, scalable reporting workflow. What was once a time-consuming and duplicated reporting process across PHNs can now be completed in minutes rather than days, from a central location.

This streamlined approach means PHNs can spend less time wrangling data and more time using insights to improve service delivery and client outcomes.