In 2012, the Australian Commonwealth Government introduced a series of reforms for the aged care sector including the implementation of the National Prioritisation System for a flexible, accessible and demand-driven approach to home care services for older people. Nevertheless, an increasing number of older people continue to wait for months to be assigned home care packages on the national prioritisation queue, a component of the National Prioritisation System. There is limited evidence on the impact of the national prioritisation queue on discharge planning practices of social workers in supporting older people returning home from hospital admission. The aim of the research described in this paper is to explore the perceptions of social workers from rural and urban health services areas on how the introduction of the national prioritisation queue has influenced discharge planning of older people who are still waiting assignment of home care packages.

This study protocol establishes the need for this qualitative study and provides an overview of the theoretical framework underpinning the research; discusses and describes the methods for sampling/recruitment and data collection, the approach to be utilised for qualitative analysis and the planned dissemination strategy.

Understanding how social workers respond to the perceived challenges to discharge planning posed by the national prioritisation queue and the implications arising from the research have the potential to inform the development of best practice approaches and further enhance social work response to identified issues.

2012年，澳大利亚联邦政府对老年人护理部门进行了一系列改革，包括实施国家优先体系，以一种灵活，可访问且以需求为导向的老年人居家服务方式。尽管如此，越来越多的老年人继续等待数月才能在国家优先排序队列（国家优先排序系统的组成部分）上获得家庭护理套餐。关于国家优先次序队列对社会工作者出院计划做法的影响，以支持老年人从住院中返回家园的影响的证据有限。

该研究方案确定了进行定性研究的必要性，并概述了支持该研究的理论框架。讨论并描述了采样/招聘和数据收集的方法，用于定性分析的方法以及计划的传播策略。

了解社会工作者如何应对国家优先排序队列对放电计划提出的挑战以及研究产生的影响，有可能为最佳实践方法的开发提供信息，并进一步增强社会工作对已确定问题的反应。