Referrals
The GP surgery doesn’t always have the answers, expertise or equipment.
Where necessary the team at the GP surgery will need to make a referral. This could be to a hospital, community, mental health or pharmacy service or even another GP practice where a specialist service is being provided.
See this for more details: https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/hospitals/referrals-for-specialist-care/
It usually takes us about 10 working days to process the paperwork for a referral.
When a referral, particularly to a hospital service is made you will be sent the details usually by text message or email.
This system allows you to track the status of your referral, when an appointment has been given and also allow you to make changes to the appointment where possible.
To learn more see: https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/hospitals/book-an-appointment/
Currently waiting times for almost all NHS services are very long.
You can learn about typical waiting times for hospitals and services in London from this website : https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/hospitals/guide-to-nhs-waiting-times-in-england/
Once a referral has been made to a service there is very little that we at the GP surgery can do to speed it up.
Please don’t ask us but contact the service directly if you have any concerns.
Currently, about 20% of our appointments at the surgery are used up by patients who are simply asking us about a referral that we have made weeks and months earlier.
These are appointments that could have been used for more appropriate reasons by people with new or different medical needs.
If your symptoms have got a lot worse since we last saw you then please get in touch.
When referrals are rejected
There are times when a referral is rejected by the NHS service that we contacted. This could be due to a variety of reasons. For instance your medical condition does not meet all the reasons for which they will see patients, or there some further tests that need to be done by the GP surgery before they can consider accepting the referral.
When a referral is rejected we will then look into the reasons why and what other options are available. We will then contact you to let you know. In some cases you will also be told directly that this has happened by the NHS service that rejected the referral.
When we seek advice from hospitals
There are times when before we can make a referral we have to first ask for advice about your case from the NHS service. This is to ensure that we refer you for the right reasons to the right service. This may take a while to process but it often means you get to see the correct people a bit sooner than if we didn’t do this. This service is called Advice and Guidance (see: https://www.england.nhs.uk/elective-care-transformation/best-practice-solutions/advice-and-guidance/).