Getting started advice for referring staff

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 referrers 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.

It is recommended that one person in the practice is nominated as a project leader for the implementation of e-RS. This person can then become the local 'expert' and liaise with the local commissioning organisation representatives and IT suppliers and ensure that implementation runs as smoothly as possible.

A lead GP should be nominated to deal with any decisions that have a clinical bearing. This person will better understand the viewpoint of clinical colleagues and help to influence those individuals.

Your local commissioning organisation should have an e-RS lead who can guide you through the implementation of e-RS.

Decide how you are going to use e-RS within the practice and consider what role each user will have in terms of handling patient referrals.

e-RS is a role-based application; all staff members that are using the system will need a smartcard with the appropriate access rights. Each person logging on to e-RS will have different areas of the application available to them depending on those access rights.

Your Local Commissioning Organisation will have a registration manager and registration agents who will be able to advise you on required smartcard roles and organise smartcards for all staff members, both clinical and non-clinical, within the practice.

Find out more information about smartcard registration.

e-RS is a web-based application; users access the service via an internet browser web page, there is no software loaded onto your PC. However, if you are using a clinical system which has the capability to integrate with e-RS then your clinical system supplier will need to be involved with any implementation to enable that part of their software.

Review our web-based e-RS onboarding section how find out how to access e-RS through web-based professional application. If accessing e-RS through integration, via the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), more information can be found in our API integration section.

The Local Commissioning Organisation, referring organisation, are responsible for offering training on e-RS.

A range of education and support information can be found on the e-RS website and through the e-RS system help.

Clinical systems suppliers will provide local training on how their systems interact with e-RS.

The e-RS Implementation team can provide guidance and support on the adoption and best-practice use of e-RS. Please contact them on [email protected] for further assistance.

You will need to decide if you will go live with all GPs at the same time or take a measured approach and include more GPs as time passes.

Work with your Local Commissioning Organisation lead and choose a date that you are going to commence using the system.

Ensure that your Local Commissioning Organisation lead, IT representatives and, where appropriate, your clinical system support team are available to support you. If you have a close working relationship with your local provider, let them know your plans.

There are many types of services available for referral within e-RS.

Find out more from the e-RS document library which provides overviews of the different services available, as well as information on requesting advice and guidance.

The specific referrers support page has a variety of materials to help create and maintain referrals.