Referrals for Professionals

Referring a patient

Most of our services are available for referral on Choose and Book. Our Directory of Services details all the services we currently offer in our hospitals and includes referral procedures for services that are not currently available on Choose and Book. This information is updated monthly and uploaded to the Directory of Services section within the GP Area of this website.

When a patient has been discharged

We have been working to integrate our systems with those in primary care to produce discharge summaries which are electronically constructed according to an agreed dataset and will be received electronically by GPs within 24 hours, and also given to patients in paper form on their day of discharge.

The electronic discharge summaries are fed by our electronic prescribing system and will allow GPs to see what treatment was carried out, details of any medication a patient has been given or needs, and how to best support patients after they have left hospital. It will also inform you when we have referred the patient to walk in centre or wound assessment follow on clinics.

In full, you can expect to see the following information on the electronic discharge summary:

• Known allergies - details of any allergies the patient has
• Presenting complaint - why the patient came to our hospital
• Primary diagnosis - what the patient has been diagnosed with
• Investigations and procedures carried out - specific details of any investigations or procedures carried out in this visit to hospital
• Information given to patient - specific information regarding their diagnosis and next steps
• Follow up arrangements - details of the next steps for the patient
• Specific request for action by Primary Care Team - i.e. community nurses to replace dressings in the home etc.
• Clinical course - detailed account of what happened to the patient during the course of their journey in our hospitals
• Discharged to - location
• Completed and checked by (name, designation and bleep number) - details of staff member who completed the discharge summary.
• You can now refer to virtual fracture clinic via ICE

In addition to the above, when the discharge summary is sent to you via our electronic prescribing system, full details of drugs/medication to take out (TTO) that the patient has received will also be included.