Like other specialties, there is currently a high demand for endoscopy services, so it’s become essential to identify patients that need procedures most urgently. Some health services have already turned to direct access pathways to support this demand.
Direct access pathways allow the primary care physician to refer patients to services without a specialty consultation. It’s appropriate for healthy patients who need a routine procedure and who have no serious medical conditions.
This gives patients who qualify for these pathways the most direct pathway to public endoscopic/colonoscopic services. It’s part of the movement towards providing value-based healthcare and provides benefits such as:
- improving patient outcomes and experience
- reducing wait times for patients who don’t require a specialist appointment prior to procedure
- reducing strain on an overwhelmed system
- avoidance of unnecessary attendance at the clinic
Redesigning the patient pathways that occur prior to procedure is driven by system pressures which are in turn the result of rising demand in the face of tightly constrained resources.
Health services, such as The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Adelaide, have also sought to streamline their direct access pathways further by introducing efficiencies into the process via health technology, such as Personify Care’s digital patient pathways. In early 2021 The Queen Elizabeth Hospital adopted our technology for use in their Direct Access Colonoscopy (DAC) pathways program.
Nurse Unit Manager
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital
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Our mobile platform allows health services to plug in their existing protocols to collect patient health history information and quickly determine their eligibility for direct access pathways.
