Mind the Gap: Making Shared Care Work Between Rural GPs and Mental Health Clinicians
Tracks
Prince
| Thursday, November 5, 2026 |
| 2:50 PM - 3:10 PM |
Overview
Tyson Reynolds, New Frontier Health
Three Key Learnings
1. Identify and address common breakdowns in rural shared mental health care, including delayed reports, lack of co-location, and workforce shortages
2. Leverage MBS items to enable regular and billable provider-to-provider conversations in rural areas.
3. Confidently manage patient risk in collaboration with other mental health practitioners, including when specialist access is intermittent or remote
Presenter
Tyson Reynolds
Research Director
New Frontier Health
Mind the Gap: Making Shared Care Work Between Rural GPs and Mental Health Clinicians
Presentation Overview
In rural and regional Australia, shared mental health care between GPs, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health practitioners is undermined by workforce shortages, long wait lists, limited local specialist availability, and the realities of coordinating across distance. Breakdowns occur not only because of clinical complexity, but because of unclear roles, delayed or absent communication, lack of co-location, and fragmented systems that leave individual practitioners carrying disproportionate clinical responsibility.
A digital coordination platform was deployed across several sites in Western Australia where significant distance separated mental health practitioners. The platform enabled GPs to convene collaborative multidisciplinary team meetings online and obtain clinical input from psychologists, credentialed mental health nurses, mental health social workers, and mental health occupational therapists based on the clinical needs of their patients. It was designed to integrate into existing clinical workflows and funding structures, including mental health treatment plans and related MBS item numbers.
Preliminary findings demonstrate greater communication between providers, more robust mental health treatment plans, improved clarity around treatment roles and responsibilities across disciplines, and higher patient engagement. Coordination around medication management, psychological treatment reviews, and risk monitoring for patients with complex mental health needs improved. Both practitioners and patients reported high satisfaction with the model. Uptake was significant, with organic referral by practitioners to colleagues indicating strong perceived value, and notable reports of reduced clinician burnout attributed to shared clinical responsibility.
By overcoming the barriers of distance and lack of co-location, this model demonstrates significant potential for rural and regional mental health practitioners. It enables clinicians across large distances to work as active partners within a truly multidisciplinary system, facilitating more connected care for rural and regional mental patients.
A digital coordination platform was deployed across several sites in Western Australia where significant distance separated mental health practitioners. The platform enabled GPs to convene collaborative multidisciplinary team meetings online and obtain clinical input from psychologists, credentialed mental health nurses, mental health social workers, and mental health occupational therapists based on the clinical needs of their patients. It was designed to integrate into existing clinical workflows and funding structures, including mental health treatment plans and related MBS item numbers.
Preliminary findings demonstrate greater communication between providers, more robust mental health treatment plans, improved clarity around treatment roles and responsibilities across disciplines, and higher patient engagement. Coordination around medication management, psychological treatment reviews, and risk monitoring for patients with complex mental health needs improved. Both practitioners and patients reported high satisfaction with the model. Uptake was significant, with organic referral by practitioners to colleagues indicating strong perceived value, and notable reports of reduced clinician burnout attributed to shared clinical responsibility.
By overcoming the barriers of distance and lack of co-location, this model demonstrates significant potential for rural and regional mental health practitioners. It enables clinicians across large distances to work as active partners within a truly multidisciplinary system, facilitating more connected care for rural and regional mental patients.
Biography
Dr Daniel Nguyen is a general oractitioner and Fellow of the RACGP. As a clinical lecturer and researcher at Curtin University Medical School, Danielh has presented internationally at cardiology conferences and is leading initiatives to strengthen collaboration between GPs and mental health professionals in rural and underserved communities. He is the co-founder of New Frontier Health, an organisation dedicated to building technology and services that improve communication and collaboration between rural health practitioners, based on the belief that better-connected practitioners lead to better outcomes for rural patients.
