Aoife Griffin, General Manager Networks HBF
Pamela Whelan, Senior Clinical Advisor HBF
Jake Parkin, Head of Analytics and Insights HBF
Jasmin Sidhu, Analytics Translator HBF
Lynne Walker, CEO Perth Clinic
Rachel Whitely, Perth Clinic
This is a complex Challenge, and you may find it useful to consider the following questions when building out your prototype:
The percentage of people aged 16-24 years who experienced a mental health disorder in the previous 12 months has increased from 26% in 2007 to 39% in the period between 2020 and 2022. The increase over this time span is greatest for young females (from 29% to 46%) compared to young males (from 23% to 32%).
In 2019, there were 461 deaths by suicide among young people aged 15–24, a rate of 14 per 100,000 young people.
Some aspects of mental health care can be covered on private health insurance, including hospital admissions and psychology services. Private hospital insurance covers the cost of hospital accommodation and a portion of the medical fees. Unlike other pre-existing conditions, which normally require you to complete 12 months of membership before you can be covered for a hospital admission, psychiatric services and rehabilitation only require a 2 month waiting period, even if the condition is pre-existing. This means you can be covered 2 months after commencing a policy.
About 1 in 5 hospital claims for privately insured patients under 30 were for the hospital treatment and care of patients with psychiatric, mental, addiction or behavioural disorders (PHA).
In the year to 202, benefits paid by PHI for in-hospital mental health care claims totalled $628M, a 3.4% increase on the previous year (DoH). Under extras or ancillary cover (services for out-of-hospital medical care), PHI paid an additional $31.8M in total for member’s claims for psychology/group therapy services, a 0.2% increase on the previous year (APRA).
You may want to talk to your Challenge Mentors about the following ideas as you develop your prototype:
The HBF Health Hospital Episodes data contains both patient demographic and diagnostic classification data for individuals who experienced a hospital episode and claimed for said episode through their HBF Health Insurance policy and includes data from July 2014 to August 2024. This data is real-world data and as such certain sensitive values, such as customer and hospital identifiers, have been hashed to ensure the privacy of our members. If any of you are unfamiliar with hashing this website is a great introduction.
The data set contains data covering a wide range of hospital admissions and not just the episodes relating directly to the question your team will be tackling, this is by design.
Other variables include;
Other data sources:
You are free to resolve this Challenge by developing your prototype in whatever means you may like. Our mentors, partners and organising team have thought of the following techniques as being viable methods to resolve the Challenge:
We would like to acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners of the land on which the WADSIH office is located, the Whadjuk people of the Nyungar Nation.