Increased access to evidence-based primary mental health care: will the implementation match the rhetoric?

There is clear evidence that coordinated systems of medical and psychological care ("collaborative care") are superior to single-provider-based treatment regimens. Although other general practice-based mental health schemes promoted collaborative care, the new Medicare Benefits Schedule payments revert largely to individual-provider service systems and fee-for-service rebates. Such systems have previously resulted in high out-of-pocket expenses, poor geographical and socioeconomic distribution of specialist services, and proliferation of individual-provider-based treatments rather than collaborative care. The new arrangements for broad access to psychological therapies should provide the financial basis for major structural reform. Unless this reform is closely monitored for equity of access, degree of out-of-pocket expenses, extent of development of evidence-based collaborative care structures, and impact on young people in the early phases of mental illness, we may waste this opportunity. The responsibility for achieving the best outcome does not lie only with governments. To date, the professions have not placed enough emphasis on systematically adopting evidence-based forms of collaborative care.