Referral and appointments newsletter March 2026

We continue to see strong progress across the service, with more NHS trusts going live with referral and appointment management capabilities in the NHS App, and increasing numbers of patients using the service to manage their care.

Alongside growing adoption, we are continuing to enhance the service. This includes updates to waiting time information in the NHS App, to give patients clearer expectations, progress on enabling Single Point of Access (SPOA) pathways, and continued collaboration to support the rollout of additional features and national standards. Thank you to everyone supporting delivery across the system.

Croydon, in the South West London ICB, use questionnaires via the NHS App to improve gynaecology triage, triaging 80 patients remotely in the time previously taken to see 5 patients in one clinic session (4 hours). Of 621 questionnaires sent to gynaecology patients, 300 responses were received, and 272 patients were triaged by pre-operative nurses. 48 patients were cleared for surgery and booked directly onto theatre lists, and 91 patients required additional tests, with zero day-of-surgery cancellations reported.

Over 100 trusts now live with additional NHS App features.

Recent go lives

East of England

Cambridge University - Core features

Bedfordshire - Core

London

Kings College - Core

Guy’s and St Thomas’ - Core

The Royal Marsden - Core

Great Ormond Street - Core

University College London - Core

Royal National Orthopaedic - Core

North West

Liverpool University - Documents, Questionnaires, Notifications and Messaging (N&M) (for Appointments, Questionnaires and Documents), Paperless Preferences (PP);

Tameside and Glossop - Core, Management Information (MI) v2

Mid Cheshire - N&M

South East

Frimley Health - Core

South West

North Bristol - Documents, Questionnaires, Document and Questionnaire Manager (DQM), N&M (for Documents and Questionnaires), PP

Bristol and Weston - Documents, Questionnaires, DQM, N&M (for Documents and Questionnaires), PP

Royal Devon - Core

Avon and Wiltshire - Core, N&M.

Single Point of Access (SPOA)

We are progressing plans to enable SPOA, for greater enablement for direct-to-test pathways and improved clinician-to-clinician communication. See the tools and resources FutureNHS page.

Waiting times in the NHS App

The waiting times feature in the NHS App is being updated for patients under the care of all NHS acute trusts. From 19 March, there will be 2 waiting times shown when a patient is confirmed as on a waiting list:

1. Average waiting time - the average (mean) wait of all patients in the specialty at each trust, and now.
2. 8 in 10 patients - for every 10 patients seen within this specialty, 8 are seen within the timeframe shown.

Find out more about how the feature works.

NHS England's Behavioural Science Unit is running a follow-up trial to last year's waiting list validation messaging randomised controlled trial to include state-of-cost of an appointment wording (see past report). Conducted with Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, the trial will test three message wordings:

1. Neutral
2. State-the-cost
3. Prosocial.

The aim is to build on the first trial and better understand how message framing affects patient response rates. Findings will be shared in the summer.

If your trust has adopted the state-the-cost wording, the team would like to hear how it's affected response rates. Please get in touch: [email protected].
 

Referrals and Appointments Reference Group - 17 March, 21 April and 19 May 

Referrals and Appointments Supplier Forum - 12 May 2026 

Access guidance on our services, demos, resources and promotional guidance to support trust and patient communications.

The latest statistics on our trust coverage, service usage, benefits and outcomes.

Find out more about e-RS and A&G.

Contact us at: [email protected]