Manage My Referral & Beyond

What happens after I have been referred?

Your GP is specialised in Family Medicine, they can deal with most ailments, prescribing medication and generally guiding patients through the medical circumstances they face. Every so often, it will be necessary to refer patients to a specialist in a particular field of medicine.
This may be for:

  1. An investigation that cannot be done in primary care and/or diagnosis,
  2. An opinion on your condition from a Consultant and/or treatment
  3. Advice and-or reassurance for the patient from a Consultant or community based service.

When a referral is sent to the specialist service. Patients have the right to choose which hospital or clinic they are referred to as long as it is offering a suitable treatment.

Services and specialist hospital departments vary in their approach to booking appointments. You may receive a phone call or letter informing you of the appointment date and time. This may be accompanied by information about what will happen during and after your first appointment.

Once the referral has been sent by the practice, you are under the care of the hospital (secondary care), and no longer the GP for this condition. Any tests and investigations required by the specialists must be ordered and done by the service and the appointments sent to the patient. Usually there is a strict time frame to respond so it is essential that you read the letter carefully and respond appropriately.

GP practices receive hospital correspondence within 2-3 weeks after your visit and test results are always sent to the specialist who requested the test, not your GP. Once correspondence has been received by the practice, GPs may have to query certain points mentioned in the letters, for example, sometimes treatments, tests or onward referrals are recommended that can only be or are best initiated by the specialist rather than the GP.

It is important that you attend your appointment for your health and wellbeing. Patients are advised that it is their responsibility to make every effort to attend their specialist appointment or liaise with the booking administrator directly if changes are required as this may otherwise lead to a delay in their being seen.
Any blood tests the specialist requests must be done by the hospital not the GP surgery.

Patients who do not attend their appointment waste valuable NHS resources and can delay other patients from being seen.

 

Telephone Numbers

How to contact the services you have been referred to:

  • Queen Victoria Hospital 01342 414000
  • Crawley Hospital 01293 600300
  • East Surrey Hospital 01737 768511
  • Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospital 01892 823535
  • Pembury Hospital 01892 823535
  • BSUH hub for Brighton and Princess Royal – 0300 303 8360
  • Princess Royal Hospital 01444 441881
  • The Royal County Hospital Brighton 01273 696955
  • Brighton General Hospital 01273 696 955
  • Worthing Hospital 01903 205111
  • St George’s Hospital Tooting 020 8672 1255
  • One call (district nurses) 01293 228311
  • MSK Service 0300 303 8063
  • Time To Talk 01444 251084  

 

 

Last Reviewed: 27/12/2023