Referrals

Helpful information and guidance for patients waiting for a hospital consultation, treatment or surgery.

Hospital and GP Practice responsibilities

NHS/Hospital - Services locally and nationally are facing a high demand for outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests.

These delays are outside the control of your GP Practice. We understand how distressing this can be, but we cannot “override” hospital waiting lists.

GP Practices - All of General Practice is under extreme pressure, with rising demand and limited funding. We must prioritise our time for direct clinical care and for those with the greatest medical need.

What is the hospital (secondary care) responsible for?

Arranging and managing hospital appointments

• Booking, changing and cancelling outpatient appointments
• Informing you of appointment dates, times and locations
• Providing contact details for queries about your appointment

Ordering, checking and acting on tests they request

If a hospital clinician orders a scan, blood test or other investigation, they are responsible for:

• ensuring the test is done
• reviewing the result
• and taking appropriate action or contacting you with a plan

Follow up and discharge decisions

• Deciding when you need follow up in hospital and arranging it
• Deciding when it is clinically appropriate to discharge you back to GP care
• Providing clear information in clinic letters about your diagnosis, plan and any monitoring they expect to continue

Rebooking missed appointments

• Where possible, hospitals should allow patients to rebook missed appointments directly, rather than asking GPs to generate a new referral purely for administrative reasons.

How you can check waiting times for your hospital

• Contact the hospital directly using the number on your appointment or clinic letter and ask to speak to the booking team or the relevant department.
• Or you can see up to date information on waiting times for many planned (non-urgent) hospital services on the My Planned Care website

We recommend using this site, alongside any information from your hospital, to understand likely waiting times. This is more accurate than asking the GP Practice, as we do not have access to live hospital booking systems.

What can you expect from us (primary care)?

Our role is to provide primary medical care and to coordinate your care. Within our limited capacity, you can expect us to:

Assess you if your condition changes

If your symptoms worsen or you develop new symptoms while waiting for hospital care, we can reassess you and decide if:

• your referral needs upgrading on clinical grounds
• or you need urgent or emergency care instead

Provide ongoing general care

• Manage your other health conditions
• Offer advice on self management and symptom control where appropriate
• Review medication that we have initiated or agreed to prescribe

Respond to clear clinical concerns from hospital teams

• If a hospital clinician writes to us with a specific, clinically appropriate request that falls within GP services, we will consider and act where it is safe and within our contract to do so

What we cannot do:

Take over responsibility for chasing hospital appointments, test results or follow up that were arranged by the hospital

Provide repeated appointments purely to:

• ask when a hospital appointment will be
• re-refer after a missed appointment where the hospital could have rebooked directly, or “check” that the hospital has done what it said it would do

Accept ongoing responsibility for monitoring or prescribing that should remain with the hospital unless there is a clear, agreed shared care arrangement

This approach is designed to protect both patient safety and the sustainability of GP services.

What to do whilst you are waiting or if you condition changes

If your symptoms significantly change while you are waiting, please contact us for a clinical review.