Vascular Surgery
Referral Acceptance
Vascular referrals are prioritised by Senior Medical Officers based on the information contained within. Additional information should be attached where available. The priorisation tool used to triage referrals can be found below under Access Criteria.
All accepted referrals will be seen within a maximum waiting time of 4 months, unless there is a clinical reason for delay.
Referral acceptance is a follows:
| First Specialist Assessments | Wait Times |
|
Waiting priority 1 |
Accepted |
|
Waiting priority 2 |
Accepted |
|
Waiting priority 3 |
Accepted |
|
Waiting priority 4 |
Declined |
At First Specialist Assessment (FSA), patients are assessed by a specialist and if surgery is required, patients are then prioritised using the National CPAC tool. A 0-100 score is allocated to each patient.
Prior to acceptance for surgery, patients are assessed in Anaesthetic preassessment clinic to ensure they are fit for surgery.
All patients accepted for surgery will be treated within a maximum waiting time of 4 months, unless there is a clinical reason for delay.
All Vascular surgery is done at Tauranga Hospital.
Surgery acceptance is as follows:
| Treatment List | |
|
Waiting priority 1 |
Accepted |
|
Waiting priority 2 |
Accepted |
|
Waiting priority 3 |
Accepted |
Prioritisation tool for other general surgical and vascular referrals
| Category | Criteria | Examples (not an exhaustive list) |
|
1 - (within 2 weeks) |
|
|
|
2 - Semi-Urgent (within 4-8 weeks) |
|
|
|
3 - Non-Urgent (within 4 months) |
|
|
| 4 - Routine (Not accepted) |
|
|
Notes
- “Clinical Priority” criteria are a guide rather than exhaustive, complete or exclusory. The grading surgeon may well take into account other factors such as comorbidity, age, history and previous investigation results to help prioritise a particular referral. The examples similarly are not necessarily prescriptive e.g., an elderly patient with severe ischemic heart disease and claudication may have a different priority from a postman with similar symptoms.
- Simple skin cancers are not considered “urgent” malignancies.
- Varicose veins if meet primary care management guidelines
- The waiting time criteria are to be seen as a guide to maximum wait. If patients cannot be seen within time, then the referrer will be notified by administrative staff.