Specialist Clinics (Outpatients)

Process your referral

If you have been referred to our specialist clinics, we will:

• Accept the referral – We will send a letter to your referring doctor that your referral has been accepted
• Redirect your referral – In support of care closer to home, we may advise your referring doctor to send your referral to a hospital nearer to where you live
• Decline the referral – If all the information we need is not supplied, we will send a letter to your referring doctor to let them know. Your doctor can send in another referral with all the updated information

Set your appointment date

Once we have accepted your referral, we set your appointment date:

• Our doctors will determine the urgency of your referral (known as triaging) to determine how soon you need to be seen
• We will add you to our booking list and will confirm this by sending you a letter
• We give you an appointment date when a time becomes available

We treat patients in turn, but patients who are more urgent will be seen sooner than other patients.

Set follow-up appointments

Once you've seen one of our doctors, we schedule follow-up or review appointments (if you need them):

• You will not receive your next appointment date, but you will be added to our booking list
• We treat patients in turn, but patients who are more urgent will be seen sooner than other patients

Booking timeframes

• Generally, all new or review appointments are booked close to the time of appointment
• We will call you for urgent appointments due in under two weeks
• For non-urgent appointments, we book the appointment around six weeks ahead and will send you a letter with the appointment details
• Contact us if you are expecting an appointment within the next six weeks and have not received notification

Can’t attend your specialist clinics (outpatient) appointment?

Your specialist has made time to see you. If you cannot come to your appointment, please tell us as soon as you can.

This helps us offer the appointment to another patient who needs care.

Thank you for helping us to provide timely access to specialist care.