We have created several resources for the NSW public that answer frequently asked questions about:
Read our Planned surgery resources for patients, carers and families.
The Planned Surgery Policy Resource Guide provides practical advice for NSW Health staff on various aspects of the waitlist policy, examples of processes for decision making, escalation and communications around wait list management in order to assist surgery and wait list managers to implement the policy.
The Treat in turn principle in practice to be used in conjunction with the ACI Theatre Efficiency Guidelines to support planned surgery list managers to organise theatre lists in conjunction with key stakeholders.
The Planned Surgery Access Policy provides guidance on key strategies that local health districts and specialty health networks are to implement to improve access to planned surgery. One of those key strategies is value based surgery. The Agency for Clinical Innovation have published the Value-Based Surgery: Clinical Practice Guide through extensive evidence review and clinical consultation. The procedures in Table 1 have been identified as offering little to no benefit to the patient based on current peer reviewed evidence, except for the specific surgical indications listed in the table.
The Joint Replacement Pathways Framework builds on the Agency for Clinical Innovations' Same-Day Hip and Knee Joint Replacement Surgery Key Principles; by providing details of approaches currently being used by some local health districts which can be adapted to local circumstances by all districts and networks. These approaches provide care pathways for patients following discharge from same day or short stay orthopaedic surgery. Each facility should tailor their own pathway depending on best practice guidelines, local protocols and staff preferences.
These pathways and resources have been reviewed by the Surgical Services Taskforce and Agency for Clinical Innovation Networks.
The templates below are for the use of elective surgery waitlist staff to support the implementation of the Planned Surgery Access Policy and include the mandatory policy requirements. They have been developed in consultation with patient groups and planned surgery access managers to support good communication between patients, waitlist staff, treating doctors and general practitioners (GPs).
The Agency for Clinical Innovation's NSW Colonoscopy Categorisation Clinical Practice Guide helps clinicians who receive colonoscopy referrals in triaging patients.