Specialist appointments Activity

Specialist appointments

Queensland Health provides free access to specialist appointments and resulting surgeries that can be planned and booked in advance.

If a patient's condition requires a specialist opinion or treatment beyond what is available within the primary healthcare setting, they may be referred by their GP to a specialist. Specialists are doctors and surgeons who have completed advanced training in a specialist area of medicine, grouped according to the area of the body or condition that is being treated.

A specialist appointment may be delivered at either a hospital or specialist clinic (also called outpatient clinics), or via telehealth. Specialist appointments do not require the patient to be admitted to hospital to get treatment.

Specialist appointment activity summary

This section provides information about the number and type of appointments held across the state.

At a glance

Waiting lists for specialist appointments

Patients in need of a specialist appointment are often referred for treatment to the nearest hospital or clinic that has available resources to manage the condition. Once the referral is accepted by the hospital or clinic, the specialist will prioritise the patient's need for consultation and allocate the patient an urgency category (1 to 3), where 1 is most urgent and 3 is least urgent. The patient will then be placed on a waiting list for their initial appointment. The time a patient waits may depend on the demand for each specialty and the urgency of their symptoms or health condition.

Specialist appointments held

An initial specialist appointment (sometimes called an initial service event) is the first appointment a patient has with a specialist doctor or surgeon in an outpatient clinic or hospital, for treatment or management of the condition for which they have been referred. When a patient has had their initial service event, they are removed from the specialist appointment waiting list.