Source data: Restrictive practices 2019–20 tables (633KB XLS).
Remoteness
Due to the small number of hospitals located in Outer regional and Remote areas, for the purpose of remoteness analysis these categories have been combined. There were no hospitals in the restraint dataset located in Very Remote areas.
In 2019–20, hospitals located in Major cities had a physical restraint rate of 11.7 events per 1,000 bed days, and a mechanical restraint rate of 0.8. This rate was higher than for Inner regional facilities (7.6 physical restraint events per 1,000 bed days; 0.4 mechanical restraint events per 1,000 bed days) and Outer regional and Remote area facilities (10.0 physical restraint events per 1,000 bed days; 0.3 mechanical restraint events per 1,000 bed days).
Hospital level
Figure RP.8 shows the variation in the physical restraint rate and Figure RP.9 shows variation in the mechanical restraint rate across Australia in 2019–20. Note that data includes public sector acute mental health hospital services only and excludes forensic units. The variability in restraint events between hospitals may be due to a range of factors, including the hospital’s service delivery model, the number of acute mental health service units in the hospital, the patient case mix, and the target population of the service units. High numbers of restraint events for a few individuals can also have a disproportional effect on the rate of restraint reported. Data for individual hospitals should be interpreted with caution as small changes in the number of restraint events can have a marked impact on their overall rate.