The NHS e-Referral Service (ERS) is an

electronic referral E-referrals or electronic referrals or electronic consultation is an electronic platform that enables the seamless transfer of patient information from a primary to a secondary treating practitioner's client management system. E-referrals have fast ...

system developed for the

Health and Social Care Information Centre NHS Digital is the trading name of the Health and Social Care Information Centre, which is the national provider of information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care in England, particularly th ...

by IT consultancy BJSS. It is used by

NHS England NHS England, officially the NHS Commissioning Board, is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care. It oversees the budget, planning, delivery and day-to-day operation of the commissioning side of th ...

and it replaced the Choose and Book service on 15 June 2015. The launch of the e-Referral service is intended to be a step towards achieving paperless referrals in the English NHS.

History

The release date was delayed by seven months from that originally announced after it failed an assessment by the Government Digital Service. When released there were 33 ‘known issues". The system went live on Monday 15 Jun 2015, but on 17 June it was shut down and GPs across England resorted to fax machines in order to refer patients. After launch, the system experienced numerous outages in its first weeks. In July 2015 users were advised to switch to

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macO ...

in order to reduce the four-minute loading time to 50 seconds. Of the 28 known issues at that date, 23 have a simple

workaround A workaround is a bypass of a recognized problem or limitation in a system or policy. A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed. But workarounds are frequently as creative as true solut ...

that can be used which are published on the website, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre. 19 Trusts were fully using the system. From October 2018 it is to be used for all out-patient referrals, and it is hoped that this will halve the number of missed appointments and generate savings of at least £50 million.

Operation

The NHS e-Referral Service supports referrals to

secondary care Health care or healthcare is the improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health profe ...

GPs The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite sy ...

. It allows users to choose the date and time of an appointment.

References

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External links

NHS Choices - What is NHS e-Referral Service

NHS e-Referral Service Booking Appointments FAQ
National Health Service (England) Government services web portals in the United Kingdom Health care software