Committee on Utilization, Review, and Education common referral form

Long wait times for specialist consultation affect patient care and health outcomes adversely. The wait-time continuum has various components, one of which is the wait time from referral request by a family physician to specialist appointment. The Committee on Utilization, Review, and Education (CURE), comprising a group of family physicians from the Department of Family Medicine at St Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton, Ont, conducted a study to identify wait times for specialist referrals and barriers to getting timely appointments. The important result from the study was that 21% of the requests for consultation received no response from specialists’ offices. Full results of the study are available from the authors. One issue that added to wait times was specialists returning referral forms with requests for more information or to resubmit referrals on the specialists’ or clinics’ own referral forms.