Background: Specialist Palliative Care Allied Health teams play a pivotal role in symptom management and improving quality of life for patients in palliative care, as well as supporting families and carers through difficult times. Despite this, Allied Health staff are typically underrepresented within Palliative Care teams across Australia resulting in long waiting times from referral to contact. This presents a challenge for these teams to provide an efficient, meaningful, and holistic service to their patients. To address these challenges effective prioritisation of patient needs is crucial.  

 

Aim: To develop a standardised triage tool for multiple allied health disciplines that utilises PCOC for increased responsiveness and accuracy of care.  

 

Methods: A triaging tool was developed to prioritise allied health referrals using a ‘traffic light system’ i.e. red, yellow, green, or grey. This system reflects the urgency of intervention.  PCOC assessment scores are the primary determinant of triaging referrals and measures the impact of interventions by allied health clinicians on symptoms or problems. The triage tool has been adapted for different allied health professions to reflect their work within palliative care. This tool was developed to effectively prioritise both inpatient and community patient needs separately, or simultaneously when a combined caseload has been required.  

 

Results: This triaging tool is used by clinicians daily to objectively prioritise their caseloads and allows for a uniform way to communicate within the team in case conference and team meetings. It helps coordinate care, ensuring that patients most urgent needs are prioritised and increases opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration when prioritising team referrals.  

 

Conclusions: This triaging tool accurately identifies urgency of patient needs to assist clinicians with effective prioritisation of patient needs. It has led to improved collaboration within our allied health team to improve team efficiency and quality of care.