Information about the management, referral and assessment guidelines

A number of the Guidelines on this website are being reviewed and updated in 2007/2008.

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Primary Care Management Guidelines

Primary care management guidelines are designed to assist primary care practitioners to manage specific clinical conditions in primary care. The guidelines have been developed with GP and specialist input. They primarily focus on recommending specific actions to deal with specific clinical problems (clinical determinants). Clinical determinants and actions, as outlined in the guidelines, are nationally consistent. However, DHBs are able to include local implementation requirements which are specific to their region.

Use of the management guidelines in everyday clinical practice will enable GPs to manage the demand for secondary services, by targeting referrals according to guideline criteria where local information has been included.

Primary and secondary providers in each DHB area have worked together locally and nationally in the development and implementation of these management guidelines.

General

These guidelines have been prepared to provide general guidance with respect to a specific clinical condition. They should be used only as an aid for clinical decision making and in conjunction with other information available. The material has been assembled by a group of primary care practitioners and specialists in the field. Where evidence based information is available, it has been utilised by the group. In the absence of evidence based information, the guideline consists of a consensus view of current, generally accepted clinical practice.

Referral and Assessment Guidelines

These guidelines were developed by clinical specialists, GPs, hospital managers and other health professionals for the 29 medical and surgical specialties. They provide a framework to assess the patient’s relative priority based on a range of medical, social, and complicating factors.

The types of guideline are:

• Referral Guidelines assist primary care practitioners when referring patients to hospital services for assessment or treatment by outlining the information that should accompany the referral, such as the results of diagnostic tests.
• Access Criteria For First Specialist Assessment (ACA) are guidelines that assist clinicians to prioritise the referrals they receive and help to ensure that the most urgent referrals are seen first.
• Clinical Priority Assessment Criteria (CPAC), are examples of tools that are available to assist clinicians to assign a priority to patients.

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