The Mackay Hospital and Health Service says it is working to streamline processes to ensure patients are seen by specialists quicker.
The hospital is introducing a ‘HealthPathways’ program aimed at getting patients from their GPs to appropriate hospital-level care in a shorter time frame.
Chief operating officer Rhonda Morton said both patients and doctors would notice the difference.
“We’ve all heard about people waiting too long on specialist outpatient waiting lists or people in the community being confused about where they should access care, so this is about care providers coming together, developing up a pathway that’s appropriate specifically for Mackay and the Mackay community, then publishing that to all practitioners so they can refer people to the right place of care the first time,” she said.
She said it would help cut patient waiting lists.
“Some patients will definitely notice an immediate difference if they’re regular users of services – they should see an improved or shorter waiting times to get into services,” she said.
“Others may not notice the difference but their referring practitioners will have a much simpler pathway to get them into care sooner.”
Health Pathways Australasia manager Juantia Gibson said the program had been successful in other regions.
“Now there are 20 regions in Australia and New Zealand making health pathways and creating all of these documents for their own local region,” she said.
“They all can use the same documents, they don’t have to duplicate all the work, it’s not a big duplication effort but they can put in the local contact numbers, the local facts and phone numbers and those sorts of things.”