Within Fairfield Orthopaedic Hip and Knee Service it was identified that disparity existed in the time taken to access the service for patients from the culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) community compared to the remainder of the population. A project team was established to analyse possible reasons for this and explore possible solutions.
A revised patient-centred process was developed which included changes such as contacting the next of kin (or an English-speaking contact), adjustment of appointment letters and introduction of confirmation phone calls with client/next of kin the week prior to the appointment.
Clients from the CALD community are now able to access an initial appointment in a similar time frame to the English speaking population. Following implementation of the new process this improved from five per cent to 40 per cent for CALD community and from 35 per cent to 45 per cent for English speaking patients.
