Outreach surgical consulting services in North East Victoria

Objective: There is a paucity of data regarding the provision of consultative outreach specialist surgical services to rural areas. This paper aims to describe a model of outreach consultative practice to deliver specialist surgical services to rural communities.

Design: Analysis of prospectively collected data for consultations in a three month period for two surgeons based in Wangaratta.

Setting: Two surgeons in regional Victoria based in Wangaratta, North East Victoria, conducting outreach consultations to Beechworth, Benalla, Bright and Mansfield.

Participants: All patients seen in consultations over a 3-month period.

Main outcome measures: Patient workload, casemix of presenting complaint, consultation outcome including plan for surgical procedure.

Results: Outreach surgical consulting was associated with a higher proportion of new consultations, and there was trend towards being more likely to result in a surgical procedure than consultations in the base rural centre.

Conclusions: Outreach surgical consulting provides surgeons with a larger referral base and provides communities with better access to local specialists. Outreach practice should be encouraged for surgeons in regional centres.