Creating a referral

1. Authenticate to Spine with the referrer role, usually a General Medical Practitioner, then log into e-RS as the ‘Referring Clinician’ for the relevant organisation.

2. Search for one of the NHS numbers allocated to the referring organisation in the test data pack. Remember: the selected patient must match the criteria for the service in order for the service to return in the referral list.

3. When the patient’s details are displayed, click on the ‘Refer/Advice’ button. 

4. This will bring up the service search criteria page. To find a particular service, enter the corresponding details starting with the appointment type and priority.

Note: Clinical Term is not mandatory as long as the Speciality and Clinic details are entered.

5. To enter a Clinical term, click on the box to the right of the field

• Enter at least the first few letters of the clinical term and then click ‘Search’.
• Click the required clinical term in the list. This will populate the ‘preferred term’ section.
• Click on the preferred term (only one can be chosen), the term will appear in the selected terms field (note: if there is a * after the term name, this means that there is a service in the environment which uses that term). 
• When complete, click ‘Done’. 

6. Select the Speciality and Clinic Type from the drop down menus. The ‘Named Clinician’ field can be left blank.

7. Enter additional filters using the ‘refine your search with’ section if required, otherwise check the details and then click on the ‘Search All’ button.

8. A list of services which meet the criteria will be displayed in the list, if the required service is not displayed, consider checking the following:

• Is the service published?
• Is the service included on the secondary care menu?
• Does the patient meet the age and gender restrictions for the service?
• Do the clinical term, priority, specialty and clinic type used to search match the configuration of the service?

Select the required service from the list by clicking the select box. The next step will depend upon the service type.

If the service is listed as ‘Directly Bookable: No’, this means that requests go into a work-list for someone at the provider organisation to arrange the appointment manually.

• Click on the ‘Request’ button. 

If the service is listed as ‘Directly Bookable: Yes’, this means that requests are booked directly into the provider PAS via Spine Messaging.

• Click on the ‘Appointment search’ button, this will then show the ‘Appointment Slot Filter’ section, which can be used to filter the available appointment times if required. 

•  A list of available appointments will be displayed in the ‘Available Appointments’ section. Select the required appointment slot and then click ‘Book’. 

Note: If ‘No Appointments Available’ is displayed instead, this means that e-RS has not received slots from the PAS. Complete a manual slot poll on the service - if this fails, then screenshot the ‘slot management’ section of the Service Management page and raise a request with the [email protected] for a message trace to troubleshoot the issue.

10. A prompt will appear asking the referrer to confirm the patient’s details. Click ‘Update person’ to amend the details or ‘OK’ to continue.

11. A summary will then be displayed of the referral details and UBRN, it is advised to make a note of the UBRN at this stage. Click on the ‘Submit’ button.

12. If any patient information is missing, the referrer will be prompted to enter this information before the referral can be submitted. If this happens, click ‘update person’ and enter the missing information before clicking save.

13. Once the referral has been submitted, the referring clinician has the option of attaching the ‘referral letter’ (clinical details) or adding additional requirements (advocate/interpreter/transport details). To add a referral letter, click ‘referral letter’ and then ‘add attachment’. Select the file as normal and then click ‘Submit’.

Note: These can be done at a later date if required.

14. Click ‘Close’. A prompt will be displayed reminding the referring clinician to print the summary page. If this is not required for the test, click ‘Continue’.