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

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 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). Note, that this video does not include recent screen layout changes.

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 5 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 
• 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

Review how to manage referrer worklist.

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.