ALBURY Wodonga Health has been accused of "privatising" adult mental health services with patients being forced to use a telephone triage service rather than dealing with specialist staff familiar with their cases.
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The Health and Community Services Union claimed five equivalent full-time staff were being cut in a move which coincided with the Royal Commission into Victoria's mental health system.
Assistant state secretary Paul Healey said he was appalled by the decision, which clearly signalled the Albury-Wodonga Mental Health Service had given up on community-based preventative mental health services.
"This is one of the primary reasons the Victorian Royal Commission into mental health has been called, because health service managers are robbing community mental health services to pay for other types of hospital activity," he said.
"Privatising this service means changing from a dedicated, specialist staffing team who personally visit and know their clients to a telephone triage service.
"It's impersonal and there will be no crucial rapport building in the contracted out service."
AWH confirmed a restructure of mental health services was underway, but rejected the privatisation claims.
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"Albury Wodonga Health is restructuring our mental health services and to improve our disparate triage services we are consolidating them to optimise our service delivery.
"No positions have been cut, staff will be offered redeployment within (AWH)."
Mr Healey said there were also concerns about "future privatisation" of clinical and acute mental health services in the Ovens and Murray region.
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