The purpose was to investigate a perception that clients of a rehabilitation team constitute an ‘easy’ group of patients, who should be managed outside public sector community psychiatric service settings.

A caseload equalisation tool was used to compare the case manager workload in the community team and the rehabilitation team of a community mental health service.

Caseload scores of clients of community and rehabilitation teams were not significantly different. Nor was there any significant difference in client complexity, time that case managers spent with clients or liaison activity.

The primary sector, even with non-government organisation support, is unlikely to be able to meet the needs of the group of patients who were being managed by the rehabilitation team.