Background There is no doubting that health care providers face increasing challenges to meet the needs of the population whilst dealing with gaps in funding. Teams need to be innovative in their approach which allows for a more proactive and targeted service (Antonacci, Barrie, Baxter, et al. J Aging Res. 2020:3921245). Our hospice applies its own triage tool which has overtime created ‘front door’ pressures on the team with over 50% of all referrals viewed as amber/72 hour response. The RUN-PC tool is an evidence based triage tool which allows services to allocate resources based on complexity (Russell, Philip, Wawryk, et al. Palliat Med. 2021;35(4):759–767). It ensures equitable, efficient and transparent access to clinical services whilst managing increasing caseloads and waiting lists (Russell, Sundararajan, Hennesy-Anderson, et al. Palliat Med. 2018;32(7):1246–1254).

Aim To apply the RUN-PC Triage Tool to community referrals.

Method The team performed a retrospective application of the RUN score on 37 amber patients. Following the results it was proposed to have an initial trial over Quarter 1 and Quarter 2.

Results The tool provided a greater breakdown of complexity of service users and allowing for the most urgent patients to be prioritised in a timely manner.

Out of 37 analysed:

7 Red 24 hours.

10 amber 72 hours.

18 Green 1 week.

2 Green 2 week.

Conclusion The RUN-PC was shown to provide further breakdown of patient need and the timeframes for services to respond. The initial scope reduced the number of patients needing to be seen within 72 hours by 20 which potentially frees up services to prioritise those in greatest need.

Further application of the tool in Q1 and Q2 will allow further data collection and analysis.