How our service helped 77% of patients back to work

Maybe this highlights a need for negotiating a slightly different Physiotherapy contract with your provider. Most departments will see urgent patients within 1-2 weeks, 'urgent' may need to be defined locally but is usually a presenting musculoskeletal condition of less than 4 weeks. But the advice for back pain is wait 6 weeks- then refer. If you know your patient, there is a history of recurrant back pain- then refer early, treatment is usually short and the patient goes back to work quicker. The quality of referral- ie defining how long patient has had symptoms, not chronic but recurrant, keen to stay in or return to work..these help catagorise patient as urgent.
Maybe it doesn't need a whole new service but adequately funding the service that is there. Not that this new service doesn't sound great- but there aren't many of them across the country.