Clinical Prioritisation Criteria consultation

SA Health’s initial focus is to invest in reducing waiting times so accessing outpatient appointments is easier, more transparent, and more effective. Through collaboration with a number of clinicians across SA, the Outpatient Redesign Project aspires to create sustainability in improved access to services, transparency, governance and accountability.

One of the initiatives is to develop consistent and publicly available Clinical Prioritisation Criteria or CPC.

The CPC are clinical decision-making support tools that assist in ensuring patients referred are clinically categorised and accepted based on standardised statewide clinical referral criteria.

Aims

The CPC aims for:

  • transparency of outpatient criteria between Local Health Networks (LHNs), primary care and the public
  • health professionals to be enabled with accurate and consistent specialty referral criteria and diagnostics required to support patient focussed decision making
  • patients to have accurate and consistent specialty referral criteria and categorisation to improve their health literacy and enable informed decision making
  • equitable assessment of patients regardless of where they live
  • specialist outpatient appointments are delivered in order of clinical urgency
  • patients who are ready for care at their first specialist outpatient appointment
  • referral and communication process improvements between referrers (e.g. primary care) and specialist outpatient services
  • increased referral quality by LHNs being transparent in the information and diagnostics required to support timely access to the most appropriate care

Consultation on CPC clinical specialities

The CPC have been developed by a multidisciplinary team of specialist clinicians including doctors, GPs, nurses and allied health professionals.

Consultation is open on the following specialities:

How to provide feedback

Consultation closes 10 July 2026

Feedback on the above listed CPCs can be provided via email to Health.CPC@sa.gov.au. Refer to the individual specialities for closing dates.