Criteria for prioritising patients on surgical waiting lists in the National Health System

Objective: To survey the importance of previously proposed criteria for prioritising patients on surgical waiting lists and to analyse their use in daily practice. Material and methods: Cross-sectional study through a self-auto-administered postal questionnaire to hospital managers, medical directors, admissions managers, and department heads of general surgery, ophthalmology, orthopaedics and traumatology surgery and vascular surgery from 139 centres. The questionnaire comprised 3 sections: a) 3 to 5 of the most important criteria had to be selected and their use in daily practice had to be assessed; b) new criteria were proposed, c) socio-demographic data. The mean and its standard deviation of each criterion of importance were calculated. The proposed criteria were categorised and their frequency was calculated. Results: The questionnaire was answered by the 22% of those surveyed. Disease severity, speed of progression, waiting time and pain were the criteria considered as most important and were the most used. The current clinical situation and the professional environment were the two most common categories defined from the criteria proposed by those surveyed. Conclusions: The surgical priority should be determined by other criteria related to surgery necessity besides waiting time. Establishing prioritisation criteria could enable current implicit criteria to be used explicitly. (C) 2008 SECA. Published by Elsevier Espana, S.L. All rights reserved.