Australia’s private hospital mental health landscape has come full circle. Just a decade ago, private mental health facilities were closing down, deemed too costly to operate. But fast forward to 2025 and we’re witnessing an interesting reversal as Australia’s public system threatens to collapse.
The numbers are alarming: hundreds of NSW psychiatrists resigned earlier this year (nearly two-thirds of the workforce when combined with the pre-existing 30-40% vacancy rate) and psychiatric beds nationwide dwindled to just 27 per 100,000 people. Patients in crisis now routinely wait for seven hours in emergency departments.
For private hospitals stepping in to fill the gap by repurposing low-volume surgical facilities into mental health centres, this shift creates unique operational challenges. Your physical space can be repurposed easily, but can your patient management software adapt from surgical episodes to ongoing psychiatric care?
New care model, new challenges
Converting an operating theatre into a mental health facility requires more than changing the furniture.
Mental health patients stay for three weeks, not days. This creates an entirely different documentation flow – ongoing progress notes, therapy outcomes and medication adjustments that surgical wards never needed to track.
The workforce changes, too. Surgical teams are replaced by psychiatric nurses documenting behavioural assessments rather than wound care. With the current nursing crisis, these facilities rely on agency staff who bounce between shifts.
Operating theatres that are too cramped for today’s surgical equipment are finding new purpose as group therapy spaces. Recovery rooms designed for 24-hour stays now house patients for nearly a month. Everything from security protocols to meal planning changes.
But the largest operational challenge? Mental health patients cycle between inpatient and outpatient care. When today’s outpatient was yesterday’s inpatient (and might be tomorrow’s inpatient again), paper files shuffling between departments simply won’t cut it.
3 essentials for smooth mental health operations
Most private mental health facilities aim for 85% occupancy to ensure high-level patient care while maintaining profitability. Effective patient management software becomes critical to meet this benchmark and manage complex state reporting requirements.
Get these essentials right to streamline your operations without sacrificing care.
1. Go digital
Paper records are a liability. Not just because they’re hard to keep track of, but because they slow down care and put compliance at risk.
Software that centralises your progress notes, behavioural assessments, treatment plans, K10 assessments and more makes it much easier to find information at a moment’s notice.
Imagine an agency nurse starting their shift pulling up a digital patient journey board, seeing who’s in each room, what needs to be done and any overdue tasks. No more rifling through folders or chasing colleagues for updates.
That’s how you keep things consistent, even with changing staff.
2. Automate your compliance
Each state has specific mental health and alcohol/drug reporting requirements with mandatory minimum data sets. Automating data capture from day one means you’re audit-ready without the last-minute panic.
Patient management software like MasterCare collects clinical and operational data at every touchpoint, making reporting automatic across everyday workflows.
This kind of visibility doesn’t just keep you compliant; it also helps you make better decisions about where to allocate resources and how to improve care. Smart reporting provides insights like occupancy rates and nursing hours per patient so you can identify service gaps.
3. Make data available anytime, anywhere and on any device
Providing mental health support isn’t a 9-to-5 job. Crises don’t wait for your shift to start.
When a doctor’s out to dinner and gets a call about a patient in crisis, they need instant access to the latest information. Pulling up a complete patient history on a mobile device allows them to give informed instructions without rushing back to the hospital unnecessarily.
You’ll need integrated patient management software if your clinical team wants secure, remote access to real-time data.
As more private hospitals fill the growing care gap, the challenge isn’t just clinical adaption, but operational transformation. Providing modern mental health care day after day requires smart, purpose-built systems that handle complexity without adding to it.
To find out how MasterCare’s patient management software could help your team, book a demo today.
