Abstract
The Joint Clinic is a clinical service of the Orthopaedic Outpatient Department, Dunedin Hospital. It was initiated to provide better, sooner, more convenient care for people with hip or knee osteoarthritis. More specifically, it was primarily aimed to address unmet need of patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the hip or knee, wherein patients referred by GPs for orthopaedic consultation were unable to be offered a specialist consultation, and were referred back to their GP without review or advice regarding ongoing management.
This document reports a utilisation-focussed, end-to-end programme evaluation of the Joint Clinic. The programme evaluation comprised a proof of concept evaluation, an implementation evaluation, a process evaluation, and an outcomes evaluation. The purpose of the report is to aid the SDHB to make decisions regarding the continuation, value, extension and/or expansion of the Joint Clinic.