Adopt a ‘no wrong door’ policy

In line with the above principles, AOD services (and all other health services) should adopt a ‘no wrong door’ policy. No client should be turned away from treatment; rather, it is necessary to establish where the client will receive the most appropriate care. Care should be coordinated, connected, and streamlined so that clients are assessed and treated appropriately regardless of the ‘type’ of treatment service and to reduce unnecessary referral [108]. When a person presents at a facility that is not equipped to provide a particular type of service, they should be guided to appropriate facilities (using active referral methods discussed in Chapter B5), with follow-up by staff to ensure that they receive appropriate care [102, 109–111]. In this way, every door in the health care system should provide access to the services needed. Guidance about which sector of the health care system should have primary responsibility for co-occurring presentations is provided in Figure 7. It should be noted, however, that it can be difficult to discern which areas should take primary responsibility for individual cases as the severity of conditions may be interpreted differently by various service providers.

Source: NSW Health [112].