Triage Service
Triage officers at Bentley Health Service (BHS) provide comprehensive mental health assessments 24-hours, seven day a week. These assessments can be provided face to face, over the phone or through home visits, which can be coordinated by triage and conducted by community mental health clinicians.
The BHS Triage Service is available to people aged between 18 and 65 years of age.
We are unable to offer assessment of individuals who are actively intoxicated or under the influence of prescribed, non-prescribed or illegal substances at the time of contact.
Making a referral
GPs are required to provide patient details including:
- phone number
- address
- medicare details
In addition we will require information regarding:
- Reason for referral?
- Urgency (are there risks to self or others and what are they?)
- Precipitating events
- Severity (how long have the symptoms been present and what are the effects)
- Past psychiatric history (what treatments have been tried or worked in the past?)
- Have medications been given sufficient time to take effect?
- Have all physical causes been ruled out?
Receiving a referral
On receiving a referral, the triage officer will contact the patient for an initial phone interview. The referral will then be taken to a meeting for discussion by the multi-disciplinary team.
Urgent referrals
Urgent referrals should be faxed, followed by a phone call made to the triage officer who will respond to the referral based on urgency.