NHS App integration with the NHS e-Referral Service

To help patients manage their NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) referrals digitally, integration between the NHS App and the patient website (Manage your Referral - MYR) took place in late October 2020.

This allows all patients who have fully registered with the NHS App to go straight into MYR from the NHS App to view or manage any e-RS referrals, triage requests or bookings, without needing the specific details for a referral (UBRN/Access Code).

This is great news for patients and will hopefully encourage more of them to manage their referrals online, freeing up NHS resources, particularly in GP practices.

Service providers need to be aware that this change enables patients (who use the NHS App) to access all their active e-RS referrals. This means, where the use of ‘dummy’ appointments or restricted services exist, that the process must be clearly explained to patients and referrers to avoid any confusion. For example, patients thinking that they have an appointment in the middle of the night, or on Christmas Day, or seeing that they have been referred (and possibly booked) into a restricted service that they may have been unaware of.

If providers need to continue with these processes, they must make sure that patients are informed and the most effective way of doing this is by adding the relevant information into the ‘Instructions’ field in the directory of services, as shown below.

The image below demonstrates how the information is presented to the patient when using MYR.

Find out further information about setting up services in e-RS.