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About the PMHC-MDS

Funding by the Australian Government Department of Health has been provided to Primary Health Networks (PHNs) through a Primary Mental Health Care flexible funding pool to support commissioning of mental health and suicide prevention services in six key service delivery areas:

  • low intensity psychological interventions for people with, or at risk of, mild mental illness;
  • psychological therapies delivered by mental health professionals to under serviced groups;
  • early intervention services for children and young people with, or at risk of mental illness;
  • services for people with severe and complex mental illness who are being managed in a primary care setting;
  • enhanced Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health services; and
  • a regional approach to suicide prevention activities with a focus on improved follow-up for people who have attempted suicide or are at high risk of suicide.

The Primary Mental Health Care Minimum Data Set (PMHC MDS) will provide the basis for PHNs and the Department of Health to monitor and report on the quantity and quality of service delivery, and to inform future improvements in the planning and funding of primary mental health care services funded by the Australian Government.

The data reported by PHNs through the PMHC MDS will form the basis for production of key performance indicators used to monitor services delivered across the 31 PHN regions covered by PHNs.

Logicly has been contracted by the Department of Health to manage the PMHC MDS on its behalf.

A specification of the data items to be collected in the PMHC MDS is available.

If you would like to be notified about updates to this specification or announcements about the rollout of the PMHC MDS please subscribe to the PMHC MDS mailing list by sending an email to support@pmhc-mds.com with the subject “subscribe news@lists.pmhc-mds.com”. This is not a general discussion list. Only moderated users can send messages to this list.

Information about how to get started on the PMHC MDS is available and will be regularly updated.

Announcements

Latest

PMHC MDS - Release of Version 5.0 for Upload and Data Entry - 18/12/2025 (v3.0.1)

PMHC MDS Update v3.0.1

We are pleased to announce that PMHC MDS v3.0.1 was released on December 18, 2025.

Version 5.0 of the data specification is now available through Data Entry, Upload and Data Extracts in the PMHC MDS.

Version 5.0 completes the rebranding of AMHC and Head to Health to MMHC and the rebranding of The Way Back to Universal Aftercare. Please refer to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing Circular (DoHDA) at https://pmhc-mds.com/communications/#/2025/08/15/FOR-ACTION-Primary-Mental-Health-Care-Minimum-Data-Set-upcoming-changes-for-Medicare-Mental-Health-Centres-and-Universal-Aftercare/ and the Introduction section of the Version 5.0 specification at https://docs.pmhc-mds.com/projects/data-specification/en/v5.0/introduction.html for overviews of the new specification.

Existing data entered using the The Way Back Version 3 specification has been migrated to the Version 5.0 specification. You may wish to review your data.

Data Entry

The following changes have been made in the Data Entry interface:

  • The “2: Head to Health” Program Type has been renamed to 2: Head to Health Clinic. This response is only to be used by remaining temporary Head to Health Clinics in New South Wales and Victoria. For all other organisations, existing episodes using this response have been migrated to “8: MMHC”.
  • The “3: AMHC” Program Type has been retired. All existing episodes using this response have been migrated to “8: MMHC”.
  • References to The Way Back have been changed to Universal Aftercare.
  • A Veteran field has been added to Intake and Episode records.
  • A Practitioner Reason for Override field as been added to the IAR-DS.
  • A new system tag !uaooh has been introduced. Please refer to the DoHDA circular above for information on how this tag can be used.
Upload

Uploads now support the Version 5.0.0 data specification as documented at https://docs.pmhc-mds.com/projects/data-specification/en/v5.0/upload-specification.html.

There will be a six month transition period during which Version 5.0.0, Version 4.1 and The Way Back Support Service Version 3 will all be accepted. Version 4.1 and The Way Back Support Service Version 3 will no longer be supported after 30 June 2026.

During the transition period, uploads in either the Version 4.1 or The Way Back Support Service Version 3 specification will be converted to Version 5.0 during upload.

Please refer to https://docs.pmhc-mds.com/projects/data-specification/en/v5.0/upgrading-from-previous-versions.html for a description of the changes between the Version 4.1 or The Way Back Support Service Version 3 and the new Version 5.0 specification.

Reporting

The Data Source selector on the reporting interface has been updated to:

  • Remove Head to Health
  • Remove AMHC
  • Add MMHC
  • Remove The Way Back
  • Add Universal Aftercare

The Wayback tab has been removed. The Wayback reports have been rebranded and moved to the standard reports tab as follows:

  • W1: Wayback Quarterly Report Template rebrand to W1: Universal Aftercare Quarterly Report Template. The W1 can be accessed by selecting Universal Aftercare as the only Data Source.
  • The W2: High level summary of overall volumes by entity report has been retired. Counts of Universal Aftercare records can now be accessed via the existing A1 report.
  • W3: Data Quality Report: Missing TWB Episode data rebranded to A14: Data quality report - Missing UA Episode data
  • W4: Data Quality Report: Missing TWB Needs Identification and Recommendation Outs rebranded to A15: Data quality report - Missing UA Needs Identification and Recommendation Outs

The following new reports have been implemented:

  • A new A13: Data quality report — Universal Aftercare episodes with no linked UA episode record
  • M1: Client wait time
  • M2: Activity Reports by Age group
  • M3: Activity Reports by Gender
  • M4: Activity Reports by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status
  • M5: IAR-DST - Recommended Level of Care
  • M6: IAR-DST - Recommended Level of Care, where intake referred to MMHC
  • M7: Monthly service activity
  • M8: Episode of care characteristics
  • M9: Activity Report: Service contact type
  • M10: Activity Report: Service contact duration

Reports can now be filtered with the new !uaooh tag. Reports can no longer be filtered with the !wayback tag.

Known Issues

In the Version 5.0 format, Program Type 2: Head to Health Clinic is only accepted for remaining temporary Head to Health Clinics in New South Wales and Victoria. An error will be produced for any other organisation. Similarly Program Type 3: will always produce an error. While data suppliers must ensure the data stored in their systems can be used to meet the PMHC-MDS specification that does not place any specific constraints as to how or what data organisations store locally, it only places requirements around what format data is supplied to the PMHC MDS. Therefore, the Version 5.0 changes do not automatically mean that organisations will need to make adjustments to their existing source data.

However, uploads need to be internally consistent. This means that where service contact or collection occasion data is modified, the linked episode and client must also be included in the upload. Therefore, when uploading in Version 5 all existing episodes must use Program Types accepted by the Version 5.0 specification. Logicly is aware that not being able to continue to submit values 2: Head to Health and 3: AMHC for existing episodes may cause issues for some organisations and is investigating improvements that would allow the submission of the original values.

The current W1: Universal Aftercare Quarterly Report Template is a simplified version of the previous Excel report. A CSV report that is similar to the Excel report will be released shortly.

The user guides have been updated to reflect these updates. They are available at https://docs.pmhc-mds.com/.

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