South Canterbury pilot programme for grommet surgeries reduces ENT Outpatient follow ups by 70%

A Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora child grommet surgery pilot programme has drastically decreased the number Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) outpatient follow ups and also helped to reduce wait times for planned ENT treatments in South Canterbury.

The pilot programme involves sending children who have had grommet surgery through the audiology team rather than the ENT outpatients department for their follow ups. The audiology team then assess and either refer back to a person’s general practitioner or, if required, on to the ENT department for additional care.

This audiology assessment has reduced the requirement for ENT outpatient follow ups by over 70% and also freed up waiting lists for other ENT appointments for both children and adults.

To measure the programme’s success, Health NZ conducted an audit of the patients seen for post-surgery assessment in audiology, which showed that, out of 796 children, only 29% (234 patients) required an ENT follow-up appointment (61% were either monitored by audiology or discharged back to the GP).

“Our ENT and audiology teams have worked together on this project and the results have significantly reduced the need for ENT follow up appointments,” says Rene Templeton, Health NZ Director of Allied Health Scientific and Technical for South Canterbury.

“The audiology team are also able to provide some flexibility to accommodate a family’s daily routines, which is very much appreciated by parents, who don’t need to work around a specific ENT clinic on a particular day,” she added.

The new programme highlights the benefits of allied health and clinical teams, along with senior medical officers, working together to help reduce wait times for patients on planned care lists. The next step in this programme is to get local GPs to directly refer those who may need grommet surgery to the audiology team instead of an ENT outpatient clinic. The audiology team will then add them to a surgical list and only include an ENT specialist where required, resulting in a further streamlining of grommet surgeries.