Initial Assessment and Referral

GPs are often the first point of contact for people seeking mental health support, often presenting with a range of interrelated factors that can make it challenging to determine the most appropriate level of care.

What is IAR?

The Initial Assessment and Referral (IAR) is a decision support tool to help referrers find the best care for patients. By using a standardised, evidence-based approach to categorise mental health levels, patients can be connected to the most appropriate local care.

The IAR guides clinicians to consider what information needs to be collected from patients, to conduct a patient-centred and holistic assessment. Your clinical judgement, combined with the IAR decision support tool, will ensure the person seeking support is directed to the most appropriate care.

Levels of Care

The IAR tool evaluates patients against eight assessment domains and matches them to a corresponding level of care.

Graphic of the eight assessment domains. One, symptom severity and distress. Two, risk of harm. Three, functioning. Four, impact of co-existing conditions. Five, treatment and recovery history. Six, social and environmental stressors. Seven, family and other supports. Eight, engagement and motivation. These correspond with the five levels of care. One, self-management. Two, low intensity services. Three, medium intensity services. Four, high intensity services. Five, specialist and acute services.

Supporting Access to Mental Health Services

We are developing mental health service directory tools to enable GPs and other clinicians to navigate the local services. On our Mental Health webpage for health professionals, each mental health service is aligned with the five IAR levels of care to support easy referral pathways.

Updates to HealthPathways will be gradually released in 2023 to integrate IAR throughout the referral sections of various pathways. A service directory is also being built to link local commissioned services.

Why Use the Tool?

  • The tool will be used by all Commonwealth-funded mental health services and promotes a shared language surrounding treatment needs, and supports clinicians’ choice of referral for mental health consumers.  
  • Identify and communicate the essential information from your mental health assessment that is critical for referral and decision-making.
  • Redefines the stepped-care approach to mental health care by recommending a level of care based on the least intensive intervention that will likely lead to the most possible gain for mental health consumers. 
  • Estimates or confirms mental health treatment needs within five defined levels of care while encouraging consumer-supported choice and decision-making.

Register for Training

Our IAR training is hosted on WentWest’s new Our West Sydney platform. To register for training, follow the steps below and click on the registration link. 

Steps to register for training. Step one, register to our community development platform, click 'Join Us' and follow the prompts. Step two, sign up to one workshop date and click 'Going'. Step three, get started by clicking on 'Learning Module 1' and complete a short survey. Step four, attend the training. Step five, collect your certificate and continuing professional development points.
Register now
IAR Training Flyer

To find out more about the IAR Decision Support Tool (DST), contact the IAR Training and Support team, via email at iar@wentwest.com.au or call 8811 7136.

FAQs

The IAR-DST is currently available on the Australian Government website: iar-dst.online

The IAR-DST has been developed for the general adult population (18-65 years of age). Future releases of the IAR will include DSTs unique to children and young people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and older Australians.

IAR-DST training is available to GPs, general practice staff, clinicians, and other mental health service providers in Western Sydney.

Read more about IAR DST training.

The training consists of a two-hour workshop delivered either face-to-face or online.

You can read more about IAR and register for IAR training at bit.ly/IAR-DST

As per the DoH guidelines, GPs and GP Registrars working in general practices in Western Sydney must attend the full two-hour training and complete the evaluation surveys to receive reimbursement. Other medical staff and clinicians are not eligible to receive payment for attending training. 

In 2023 GPs will be able to claim a minimum of 2 hours of CPD from the RACGP. This may be extended based on additional post-workshop practical activities you choose to complete. A certificate of completion will be provided to all participants who complete the two-hour training. Attendance will be recorded when you join the online or face-to-face sessions and actively participate in the entire session.

The Department of Health and Aged Care (DoHAC) has advised that the integration of IAR-DST into GP clinical software is planned for June 2023.

There are no immediate plans to introduce new MBS items for the IAR-DST. However, nothing prevents GPs administering the IAR-DST using existing MBS items provided they meet the MBS item descriptor and all other legislative requirements.

The priority is making the IAR-DST accessible and available to GPs in a way that enables them to use it easily as part of their workflows. Future enhancement to IAR-DST, including potential integration into mental health treatment plans, will be considered as more GPs utilise the tool. 

For additional questions and support, contact our IAR Training and Support team via email at iar@wentwest.com.au or call 8811 7136.