Booking and Referral Standard

The Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS) supports the exchange of referrals, bookings and service updates between healthcare providers. It provides a consistent way for healthcare organisations and their suppliers to share information, helping services coordinate care, reduce manual processes and improve patient journeys.

BaRS can be used across a range of referral pathways and care settings, allowing information to move between systems using a common standard.

BaRS uses nationally defined standards and specifications to support the exchange of referrals, bookings and service updates between healthcare systems. It is made up of 3 layers:

Transport layer: defines a standard way for systems to communicate with each other.

Workflow layer: supports standardised patient journeys built on transport layer operations.

Payload layer: defines the information exchanged between systems using FHIR resources.

• Implementation and integration
  Business and technical guidance for using BaRS

This diagram shows how information moves between organisations using BaRS.

The following documentation and guidance support the implementation and use of BaRS:

• Core Foundation standards and requirements used by all BaRS implementations

• Applications guidance for supporting specific patient journeys

• Pre-releases documentation for applications that are not yet publicly available

• Booking and Referral FHIR API specifications for implementing and integrating with BaRS

• Building healthcare software guidance
  Guides for healthcare functions, care settings and NHS products

BaRS is designed for healthcare organisations looking to improve referral and booking processes, and for healthcare IT suppliers developing systems that support these services.

Suppliers implementing BaRS must meet assurance requirements before their solutions can be used in live environments.

Implementation guidance for common referral and booking journeys supported by BaRS:

• NHS 111, clinical assessment services (CAS) and emergency departments (EDs)
• NHS 111 online, EDs and urgent treatment centre (UTCs)
• Streaming and redirection, EDs and UTCs
• 999 and CAS referral
• 999 and CAS referral for ambulance validation
• GP and community pharmacy
• 999 Ambulance service trust (AST) and 999 AST (this journey is in development)

This service is live and has been since April 2023.

The central BaRS routing proxy is a gold service which means it is supported 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

• Supplier status
  View organisations engaged with BaRS and check their current supplier status

To use this service, you'll need to meet technical and governance requirements. The links below explain what you need to do:

• Compliance and governance
  Governance, compliance and privacy requirements for organisations using BaRS

1. Identify the use case that would best match your requirements.
2. Review the supplier status to check if your supplier is BaRS ready.
3. Speak to your supplier about either implementing BaRS or development requirements.

Check the implementation guide to understand how to develop BaRS for your product. 

• Information governance
  Information governance policy and the detail of the BaRS privacy notice
• Clinical safety
  Clinical safety information and provides a link to the BaRS clinical safety case report and BaRS hazard log