Validation of the responding to urgency of need in palliative care (RUN-PC) triage tool.

Abstract

The Responding to Urgency of Need in Palliative Care (RUN-PC) Triage Tool is a novel, evidence-based tool by which specialist palliative care services can manage waiting lists and workflow by prioritising access to care for those patients with the most pressing needs in an equitable, efficient and transparent manner. This study aimed to establish the intra- and inter-rater reliability, and convergent validity of the RUN-PC Triage Tool and generate recommended response times. An online survey of palliative care intake officers applying the RUN-PC Triage Tool to a series of 49 real clinical vignettes was assessed against a reference standard: a postal survey of expert palliative care clinicians ranking the same vignettes in order of urgency. Intake officers (<i>n</i> = 28) with a minimum of 2 years palliative care experience and expert clinicians (<i>n</i> = 32) with a minimum of 10 years palliative care experience were recruited from inpatient, hospital consultation and community palliative care services across metropolitan and regional Victoria, Australia. The RUN-PC Triage Tool has good intra- and inter-rater reliability in inpatient, hospital consultation and community palliative care settings (Intraclass Correlation Coefficients ranged from 0.61 to 0.74), and moderate to good correlation to expert opinion used as a reference standard (Kendall's Tau rank correlation coefficients ranged from 0.68 to 0.83). The RUN-PC Triage Tool appears to be a reliable and valid tool for the prioritisation of patients referred to specialist inpatient, hospital consultation and community palliative care services.