The integration of a Podiatrist into an orthopaedic department: a cost-consequences analysis

Table 1 Summary of patients with non-urgent foot and ankle complaints managed in the usual care and triage clinics over the 12-month periods

	Usual care^a	Triage^b	p value
Total number of new patient appointments, n	72	212
Total number of review patient appointments, n	61	66
Total number of clinic sessions, n	110	70
Age, years, median (IQR)	56.1 (20.4)	57.4 (18.7)	0.901^‡
Gender, no. women (%)	59 (82.0)	161 (75.9)	0.418^‡‡
Total new patients per session^c, mean (SD)	0.7 (0.8)	3.6 (1.0)	< 0.001^‡
Number of appointments per patient, mean (SD)	1.9 (1.1)	1.3 (0.6)	< 0.001^‡
Number of patients discharged without surgery^d, n (%)	63 / 72 (87.5)	139 / 173 (80.3)	0.135^‡‡
Surgical conversion rate^e	12.5%	76.1%	< 0.001^‡‡

^aoutpatient clinic, patients with non-urgent foot and ankle complaints managed by Orthopaedic Surgeons and registrars (July 2014–June 2015);
^boutpatient clinic, patients with non-urgent foot and ankle complaints managed by a Podiatrist (July 2015–June 2016);
^cincludes all new patients seen, including those currently under review in the triage clinic;
^dincludes patients discharged from triage clinic and those referred to Orthopaedics and discharged;
^esurgical conversion rate is based on conversion from orthopaedic outpatient appointment to consent for surgery
^‡ p calculated for differences between groups analysed with Mann-Whitney U test
^‡‡ p calculated for differences between groups analysed with chi-squared test

ISSN: 1757-1146