Health and Community Services (HCS) waiting lists are used to manage our referrals from medical professionals (such as General Practitioners, dentists and others) to specialists within HCS.
Referrals and triage
All our referrals are triaged by one of our clinicians to determine the priority of treatment for the patient's condition. Triage is the systematic sorting of patients according to the urgency of their need for care and is used to allocate appointments.
All our patients are assigned one of the following categories:
Our patients are selected for outpatient appointments according to clinical priority. Patients of the same clinical priority are appointed in chronological order i.e. the patients who have been waiting longest will be seen first.
What happens after an outpatient appointment?
Once a patient has attended their first outpatient appointment they are removed from the outpatient waiting list. If they require further outpatient treatment or review, they will have follow-up appointments scheduled.
If the patient requires inpatient treatment (such as an operation or other inpatient procedures requiring a stay in hospital) they will be added (listed) to the inpatient waiting list for the correct specialty. This listing will be triaged, prioritised and scheduled according to clinical need and chronological order.
A patient may require a Diagnostic test (such as an endoscopy or a radiology examination) and as such will be added to the relevant waiting list.