Getting started advice for provider staff - NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS)

If you are planning to begin using e-RS for the first time, or if you are an existing user and want to maximise the benefits, visit the e-RS providers webpage for guidance and recommendations based on best practice.

To use e-RS to promote your services to referrers and manage referrals correctly, you will need to consider the following areas.

The implementation of e-RS within any provider organisation should be managed by a dedicated lead. This person will pull together all aspects of the migration to e-RS and should liaise with all stakeholders to ensure that they aware of their responsibilities and are comfortable with any changes to their working practices. Depending on the size of your organisation these people may include:

Clinicians – should provide input regarding their services – what conditions do they treat? What procedures do they perform? What SNOMED clinical terms are appropriate for their services? What is their expectation of how they will review their referrals and/or reject or redirect inappropriate referrals?

Clinical Lead – each organisation should nominate a clinical lead to help deal with any decisions that have a clinical bearing and ensure that clinical governance is maintained. This person is best placed to help influence and support clinical colleagues. The national team has clinical leads that can provide practical guidance on clinical engagement if required.

Capacity/Clinic Managers – need to be proactive in monitoring available capacity and adjusting slot polling times to ensure enough appointment slots are available on e-RS.

Appointments/Booking Clerks – have responsibility for monitoring and managing worklists and will need to understand the changes to their working processes when managing either directly or indirectly booked appointments. They will need to decide how to manage patients who may need to be booked outside of e-RS. 

IT Lead – the IT department/team needs to dedicate a member of staff to look at the requirements for the technical deployment of e-RS and ensure that all equipment is fit for purpose. They will also need to liaise with external suppliers e.g. patient administration system suppliers, as appropriate.

Registration Authority Manager – will decide on the appropriate roles for staff in each area once a decision has been made about who will sponsor them.  Find out more about the business roles used within e-RS.  

Training Department – need to provide training for all e-RS users, visit the training section for providers for more information about training and support. Specific training support can be directed to [email protected].

The Directory of Services (DOS) is the core of the e-RS application. It enables referrers to find and book patients into the appropriate services.

Find out more about creating and maintaining the e-RS DOS.

If your services are going to be on the primary care menu in e-RS rather than being available nationally, they will need to be commissioned by a commissioning organisation for them to be visible to referrers in that area.

The commissioning organisation(s) need to be made aware that services have been published so that they can commission them within e-RS to make them available to referrers.

Find out more information about the commissioning role.

e-RS enables service providers to review referral information online and to either accept, redirect to another more appropriate service, or reject a referral.

Find out more about managing referrals for directly bookable service and indirectly bookable service.

Visit our document library for reference guides, videos and learning materials.

Specific guidance is available to support independent sector providers and mental health providers.