Sunshine Coast Health is seeing more patients than ever before in its outpatient clinics, with the latest data showing there were more than 787,000 appointments in 2025.

This is an increase of around 50,000 appointments compared to the 2024 data, or more than 136 extra appointments each day.

An outpatient appointment is a scheduled, non-admitted hospital visit or telehealth appointment, where you see a specialist doctor, nurse or allied health professional for a consultation, tests or minor procedures. They often require a GP referral.

How did we do it?

Medical Directorate Nursing Service Director Nerissa Reid said to achieve these record numbers, our teams looked at how outpatient clinics were being used and if there were different ways or models of care we could use to better care for patients.

“We worked to introduce nurse-led and allied health-led programs alongside specialist clinics, allowing patients to be seen and assessed sooner,” she said.

“Clinic formats were also reviewed, for example in neurology, patients with the same condition, such as migraines or seizures, known as a subspecialty, were booked on the same day, helping to better coordinate staff availability.”

Sunshine Coast Health also introduced a respiratory outreach clinic for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients, enabling them to be seen and treated in the community rather than travelling into hospital. This approach supports care on Country, strengthens cultural connection, and makes it easier for patients to access timely treatment in a setting that feels safe, familiar, and supportive.

Surgery and critical care

Surgery and Critical Care Nursing Service Director Gill King said they also looked at patient lists and reviewed if they could be seen by another specialty.

“In plastic surgery for example, we had a number of people with skin lesions, so we set up a clinic with a plastic surgeon and a general surgeon to determine who actually needed to see a plastic surgeon, and who could join a shorter waitlist with a surgeon with more availability,” she said.
“We also held super clinics across some specialties, which involved putting our resources into seeing a high number of patients, for example in urology we saw a month’s worth of patients in just one day.”

Super clinics are scheduled at specific times to make sure that there is enough staff, space, equipment, and specialist support whilst still maintaining our ability to care for urgent, emergency, and complex cases. They allow a large number of patients from the same or related specialties to be seen efficiently, making the best use of available resources.

Surgery also saw an uplift in virtual, or telehealth, appointments.

“While this isn’t suitable for all specialties, it works well for those who may not need to be seen face-to-face in appointments leading up to their surgery,” Ms King said.

Virtual acute care service

Caloundra Health Service in particular saw a large increase in outpatient appointments, recording around 25,000 more appointments in 2025 compared to 2024.

Caloundra Health Service Director of Nursing and Facility Manager Amy Carey said a main driver of this was the increase of patients in our Virtual Acute Care Service, or VACS.

Our VACS nurses and doctors provide care to patients in their own home, via telehealth, and on average are caring for around 150 patients a day.

“We treat patients that maybe have had a presentation to one of our emergency departments, but they don’t need ongoing care (within a hospital), or that may have had surgery at one of our hospitals and we look after them once they have gone home,” Ms Carey said.

In the 2024/2025 financial year, there was a growth in referrals to VACS of 183% compared to 2023/2024.

“We can talk to the patient about their pain levels, about caring for their wound, about any symptoms they might be having following their time in hospital and work out a plan -whether that’s more medications they might need or a change in antibiotics. We can also see their wounds and potentially organise additional support if they need ongoing care,” Ms Carey said.

The service is set to grow, with more surgical specialties currently being onboarded including urology, ENT, maternity and gynaecology.

Sunshine Coast Health Chief Executive Dr Peters Gillies said increasing outpatient appointments has a positive impact on the whole health service.

“By treating and caring for patients in clinic, especially those who need ongoing support, we can step in early and hopefully prevent them from needing to come back to hospital,” Dr Gillies said.

“It means patients are getting the right care at the right time, without unnecessary delays.”