Referring organisations - support materials for using the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS)

Best practice guidelines for referrers  generic guidelines for referrers and their responsibilities in e-RS.

Putting patients in control of their outpatient appointments video (duration 2 minutes) explains how patients can access and manage their referral information online. The video includes the benefits of using the application for both patients and professionals. Further guidance can be accessed from our Helping patients manage their referral online page.

Different channels for referring patients

Find out about the following different channels available in e-RS via which a referrer may obtain a clinical opinion and/or refer a patient:

• Advice and guidance model
• Referral assessment service model
• Directly bookable service model

Referring a patient

Learn how to initiate a referral, or advice and guidance, in our video (duration 3 minutes). 

Find out more about how to select appropriate services for a patient and create a referral request (duration 7 minutes).

Find out how to create a referral request and how the patient manages their appointment online (duration 13 minutes, includes chapters so users can jump to specific points of the video).

Review the step-by-step guide to referring patients using e-RS to understand how to initiate referrals, attach referral letters, and manage existing referrals for further information.

Find out more about advice and guidance and how it allows a clinician to seek advice from another, providing digital communication between two clinicians: the 'requesting' clinician and the provider of a service, the 'responding' clinician. The advice and guidance toolkit provides support for all advice and guidance users.

Review the two week wait referrals video (duration 7 minutes) which shows how to effectively refer a suspected cancer patient through e-RS as a two week wait referral. The video does not present some updates in e-RS, mainly from release 13.9. Following this release in March 2024, Referral Assessment Services (RASs) could be added to a shortlist of referral services. Learn more about Faster diagnosis guidance. 

Speciality and clinic type support:

• specialty and clinic type overview video (duration 6 minutes). This video explains the terms used within e-RS and demonstrates how specialty and clinic type are used to locate a suitable service for patient referral. The video does not present the change made in release 13.9 whereby Referral Assessment Services (RASs) can be added to a shortlist of referral services. More information on this and other updates can be reviewed from the e-RS releases page.

• specialty and clinic type list. Find out about all the specialty and clinic types available within e-RS. 

Pathway start changes made to the date value in e-RS to support accurate capture of the Referral To Treatment (RTT) clock start.

Worklists

These videos provide information on optimising, navigating and managing referrer worklists.

Navigating and optimising worklists video (duration 10 minutes) covers a walk through of the referrer worklist and options available to the users for adjusting layout. 

Rejected/triage response worklist:

• rejected/triage response worklist overview video (duration 4 minutes) covers the different referral statuses displayed and what each status means
• actioning the referrals on Rejected/Triage response worklist video (duration 10 minutes) covers actions that can be taken to process referrals in this worklist

Letter outstanding worklist: 

• letter outstanding worklist overview video (duration  6 minutes) covers types of referrals and options available to action the referrals 
• actioning referrals on Letter outstanding worklist video (duration 8 minutes) covers relative actions that can be taken on referrals with different statuses in this worklist. 

Incomplete worklist video (duration 6 minutes).

Advice and guidance worklist video (duration 2 minutes). 

Assessment returned/Cancelled/DNA worklist video (duration 7 minutes).

Awaiting booking worklist video (duration 7 minutes).

More information on worklists can be found on the e-RS Help

Incomplete referrals these have been created from an integrated GP system and have not been processed fully. Review the guidance to help referrers in retrieving and resolving incomplete referrals.

Deceased patient referral management  this guidance provides an overview of how deceased patients with open electronic referrals should be managed within e-RS.

Overview virtual training sessions covering different user roles are undertaken regularly.

Training environment - e-RS provides a training environment for end users. This mirror live e-RS and allow training on a life-like system, without the risk of accessing or altering real data.