Economic Analysis of Specialist Referral Patterns in Mackay, Queensland Following HealthPathways Implementation

HealthPathways is a clinical information portal developed in New Zealand that enables general practitioners to manage and refer their patients in a local context. We analyzed specialist outpatient appointment costs in Mackay, Queensland before and after HealthPathways implementation.

We retrospectively examined specialist outpatient costs for patients referred by Mackay general practitioners for conditions with varying levels of HealthPathways implementation. Ranked from most clinical pathways available to none, chronic diabetes, cardiology, respiratory, and urology visits from January to March 2015, pre-pathways, and January to March 2017, post-pathways, were assessed. Monte Carlo simulation was used to estimate cost changes. Per-visit costs were multiplied by visit numbers to estimate policy impact.

The mean cost per visit increased from $220 to $305 for diabetes and $270 to $323 for respiratory, and decreased from $296 to $257 for cardiology and $444 to $293 for urology. The policy impact for each disease group over 3 months after accounting for visit numbers was a likely saving of $30 360 for diabetes and $10 270 for cardiology, and a likely cost increase of $24 449 for respiratory and $20 536 for urology.

We observed that conditions with more comprehensive clinical pathways cost Mackay HHS substantially less following implementation. Costs for low and no pathway implementation referrals increased slightly over the same period.