Your General Practitioner or Practitioner referred you to specialist outpatients as they considered that your reason for referral condition required specialist opinion beyond what is available within the primary healthcare or community setting.

Referrals are seen in order of clinical urgency. The clinical urgency of your referral is assessed using Clinical Prioritisation Criteria (CPC) where they exist for a specialty, or as per existing local referral guidelines. CPCs are clinical decision support tools that will help ensure patients referred for public specialist outpatient services in Queensland are assessed in order of clinical urgency regardless of where they live and that patients are seen when they are ready for care. The CPCs are available at the following link: Clinical Prioritisation Criteria | Clinical Prioritisation Criteria (health.qld.gov.au)

Clinical urgency categorisation recommends a patient’s clinically recommended waiting time as:

Category 1 – appointment required within 30 calendar days

Category 2 – appointment required within 90 calendar days

Category 3 – appointment required within 365 calendar days.

In some specialities there are high numbers of patients waiting to be seen that may result in patients waiting longer than clinically recommended. 

For further information about specialist outpatient clinics at Queensland public hospitals, visit Specialist Services or Outpatient Clinics. Please also see our Data Quality Statement.