Under the National Health Reform Agreement, the Standing Council on Health have requested the Australian Institute of Health & Welfare work together with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons to develop new national definitions for elective surgery urgency categories including not ready for care to be used in all Australian public hospitals.
The project objective is to develop, and recommend to the Standing Council on Health, agreed national elective surgery urgency category definitions (including not ready for care) that will enable consistent application across all states and territories.
The national definitions are expected to:
- facilitate nationally comparable elective surgery urgency category data and effective monitoring and comparison of elective surgery waiting times performance both within and across jurisdictions
- support consistent and transparent reporting against the National Elective Surgery Target (NEST) and for other national reporting of elective surgery waiting times performance
- support an appropriate balance between standardisation of practice and clinical decision making when assigning an urgency category
- enhance overall elective surgery waiting list management with benefits for:
- individual patients and their families
- clinicians
- policy makers and elective surgery service managers.
The development of the national definitions will take into account:
- the link between elective surgery urgency category definitions and the ‘scope’ of elective surgery (what is elective surgery?)
- outcomes of other national work on elective surgery urgency categorisation, current elective surgery urgency category definitions, policies, guidelines and practices and relevant international approaches
- the concepts of staged and deferred patients, in connection with the definition of not ready for care.
More detailed information is available in this submission information paper that was provided for the public submission process used to inform the work to develop the definitions.
Public submissions
The AIHW received 20 public submissions.
Proposals for stakeholder feedback
Further information
Contact
For further information or to comment on this work:
Email:
Phone: 02 6244 1000