To use the advice and guidance worklist:
When creating an advice and guidance request consider:
In general, advice and guidance should not be used to ask questions about:
- emergency patient care
- patients already under hospital follow-up
- clinical questions where accessible local or national guidance already exists
Reviewing an advice and guidance response
Monitor the advice and guidance worklist regularly to keep on top of advice and guidance requests and responses.
The advice and guidance worklist can be used by:
- logging onto e-RS and clicking on the worklists tab
- using the filters to change the worklist type to advice and guidance
- selecting the load button, which will populate the worklist to show all active advice and guidance requests and responses in one place

If onward referral is recommended by the provider clinician:
- convert the advice and guidance to referral by opening the UBRN
- select the refer now button
- an advice and guidance request/response does not initiate the referral to treatment (RTT) clock, which only starts once a referral is received by a provider
If a provider does not respond to your request within an appropriate timeframe, referrers can update existing advice and guidance requests. This will put the request back at the top of the provider’s advice and guidance worklist. You can contact your commissioning organisation and ask them to raise the issue with the provider in question if necessary. Recommended response times should be agreed with the providers and commissioning teams, and often range from 2-5 working days. Review the NHS England benchmark prices for advice and guidance services, found in the Non-mandatory prices 2019-20 spreadsheet (Benchmark-advice and guidance tab), in the National tariff payment system: supporting documents.
Searching for a previous advice and guidance response
There are two enquiries in e-RS that allow you to see historic advice and guidance requests and responses information, including attachments, from the past 18 months:
Select the enquiries tab at the top of the screen
From the dropdown list select either:
- patient enquiry – enter the advice and guidance UBRN or NHS number to search for an individual patient
- advice and guidance enquiry
For advice and guidance enquiry:
- select your speciality and time period to search for all advice and guidance responses within a defined time frame (maximum 90 day window)
- click the patient name header to arrange advice and guidance responses into alphabetical order by name if required
For access to historical advice and guidance requests and responses completed over 18 months ago review our guidance on archived referrals.
Read our quick guide on how to log on to e-RS.
Read our training pages and e-RS help files (N3/HSCN connection required).