Background: Access to clinical therapies in primary care is rationed using waiting lists in which people are assigned to broad urgency categories. Health and social care professionals are responsible for accepting patients referred to these services, determining the appropriate urgency category and selecting patients from the waiting list to receive therapy. There are currently no agreed upon criteria to guide health and social care professionals in making these decisions, leading to striking differences between community healthcare networks in how urgency categories are conceptualised, and the number of weeks patients must wait for services.
Aim: To develop a waiting list protocol for primary care therapy which makes prioritisation of patients more consistent and access to therapy in primary care more equitable.
Approach: Our research program proposes a novel three phase approach to generating these important policy and practice outcomes; (i) we will use a mixed methods approach to understand the current ‘as is’ referral and waiting list management process used by therapists in primary care (ii) using established systematic and scoping review methods we will identify best international practice in relation to waiting list management and patient prioritization practices and (iii) in collaboration with key stakeholders we will use nominal group technique to develop a comprehensive waiting list management protocol which uses best available evidence and stakeholder input to addresses gaps in current ‘as is’ practice.
Anticipated Outcomes: We will produce (i) validated process maps which document, for the first-time current practice in managing therapy waiting lists in primary care; (ii) evidence syntheses (n=2) of best practice in managing demands for primary care based therapy and (iii) a co-designed and validated waiting list protocol(s). This protocol will be presented to key knowledge users in the Department of Health ready for implementation