Dornbirn Hospital

Patients are treated according to urgency

From now on, people will have to wait longer at the hospital if their complaints are not too serious.(Bild: Stadt Dornbirn)

Dornbirn Hospital is launching the "Manchester Triage" system from Monday. The aim is to filter out really urgent cases more quickly. 

Because more and more patients are visiting the hospital outpatient departments and it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the really urgent cases from the less urgent ones, Dornbirn Hospital has been breaking new ground since Monday. It is now working according to the so-called "Manchester Triage" system. This means that

Patient complaints are categorized on a five-point scale: "immediate", "very urgent", "urgent", "normal" and "non-urgent". Depending on which category you are assigned to, the waiting time increases or decreases. The previous system of first come, first served is now a thing of the past. Anyone who goes to the hospital outpatient clinic will be asked for an "initial assessment" after registering, where the urgency level will be determined within ten minutes.

"Professional solution"
As the hospital managers emphasized on Monday, the aim is by no means to put people off visiting the outpatient clinic, but rather to work more efficiently. One effect that longer waiting times for minor ailments could have, however, is that more people will visit their GP first again. Dornbirn's mayor Andrea Kaufmann was in any case satisfied with the "professional" solution that had been found.