Referals

[hsaunders]

i am working in a musculoske;etal outpatients and we a have the ususal headaches of waiting lists.we are looking at casebanding our referals in terms of how much time a ceratin condition needs and i was wondering if anyone has any experience of this. at present our referals are triaged into acut,asap and routine but all referrals receive a set 40min assessmnet abd 20 min follow up sessions.
also if anyone has any waiting list removla revelations would be very grateful!
regards Helen

[NARSTR]

At one time we set aside 1 experienced physio in O/P dept to screen all referrals. This had the huge advantage of sifting out the inappropriate ones, and those that needed to be in a more suitable environment -eg with community physios. however the dept was so depleted by cutbacks this wasn't feasible to continue with. If you can spare someone for a set time each week to deal with the non-acute referrals, for example, considerable time can be saved and GPs etc educated to other ways of managing patients.

[perfphysio]

HI Helen. in terms of time do you mean length of treatment time or number of sessions.

I would think a good way forward is the development of a step down process. i.e. Triage and assessment. then individual treatment for 4-6 sessions maximum, then a group class for 6-8 weeks, followed by a followup check at 3 months. The patients should not be able to reapply to the triage level with the same condition during the 3-4 month period (stopping repeated waiting list offenders/squatters)