Mental health inpatient safety works yet to be completed two years on from WA Health suicide risk audit

Mental health units at Fiona Stanley Hospital and Armadale Health Services are yet to remove fixtures identified as suicide risks more than two years after WA Health conducted an audit into patient safety. The 2023 audit of WA’s public mental health inpatient units found 63 units across 17 hospital sites required work to fix or remove any fittings or hardware that could be used to self-harm. Almost $2.5 million has been awarded this year for crucial anti-ligature remediation works at several mental health wards across the hospitals. At FSH, that included tapware, grab rails and curtain cords, among other items across the hospital’s mother and baby unit, youth unit and adult unit. The near $200,000 contract to address the problem was only awarded at the beginning of this month, more than two years after the original audit. At AHS, one of its two inpatient mental health wards and its high dependency unit require more than $2m of work to address the “replacement and upgrade of anti-ligature fixtures and fittings”. That’s in addition to the $3.1m already spent on fixing risks to patient safety at the Armadale hospital last year in a separate contract — double its original value of $1.6m. WA Health would not confirm the number of ligature points identified in its audit, however it’s understood they are categorised by risk. “More than $30 million has been funded in the State Budget to progress remediation works across WA public Mental Health Inpatient Units,” a WA Health spokesman said. “Remediation works have begun and will continue over the next few years, enabling a significant system-wide transformation to enhance patient safety and care environments.” Lifeline 13 11 14