Referral Assessment Services (RASs) added to a shortlist in the NHS e-Referral Service

To support referrers in giving patients greater choice, the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) has introduced the ability for Referral Assessment Services (RASs) to be added to a patient’s shortlist. This means referrers (including providers that onward refer via e-RS ) are now able to create a shortlist of services which includes any combination of RASs and bookable services.

• referrers (including providers that onward refer via e-RS) are now able to create a shortlist of services that includes any combination of RAS and bookable services
• if patients do not make their choice while at the referring organisation, they are able to contact the Assisted Digital Service Line or go online using either Manage Your Referral (MYR) or the NHS App to choose which provider they want to send their referral to
• patients are able to use Assisted Digital Service Line, MYR or the NHS App to move their referral to a different service on their shortlist whether it is currently in a RAS or bookable service
• RAS referrals are not available to providers until the patient has made their choice and the clinical information attached
• patients that do not make a choice of service where the shortlist includes RASs will receive reminder letters in the same way

These changes mean that the referrals into RASs are visible to patients through the NHS App, MYR and e-RS generated letters. Our research shows that patients can be confused by the concept of RASs and the including words like ‘RAS’, ‘Referral Assessment’ and ‘Triage’ in the service name is not helpful to them. Referrers can see whether they are selecting bookable or triage services, so including those words in the service name adds no value for them either.

Provider organisations should consider reviewing and amending all RAS service names to reduce patient confusion as soon as possible.

We suggest that using the standard e-RS Service Naming Convention (Service description-Department name (Optional)-Organisation name-ODS org code) should be sufficient and help to reduce patient confusion.

Below are some anonymised examples of current e-RS service names and suggested replacements using the naming convention:

In addition, there are some RASs where the name suggests that they used to accept Advice and Guidance (A&G) requests without A&G functionality being enabled. This means that referrers must send the A&G request through as a RAS referral. To prevent these being visible to the patient online or via the NHS App it is suggested that either A&G functionality is added to the services or that stand alone A&G services are established.

To make sure users fully understand the changes:

• alerts have been circulated through the e-RS system over the coming months
• virtual engagement events have been held from January until March for referrers and providers
• support materials on the e-RS website have been updated along with additional information to help when making referrals:
  • creating a referral request to a specific referral assessment service (duration 3 minutes)
  • creating a shortlist to include bookable services and referral assessment services (duration 3 minutes)
  • emailing and printing information to patients (duration 6 minutes)
  • how patients manage their referrals digitally (in development)