Playbook, medical practice
Referred in the spring, still nothing: what a practice can answer
The waiting list a patient asks a surgery about is almost never the surgery's. They ask here because the referral letter left this building, and because the hospital is a switchboard they have already failed to get through. The honest answer is a description of a boundary, and it is still worth giving.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for waiting lists holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A practice does not hold a waiting list in the sense the question means, because the queue sits with whichever hospital or community service received the referral and is managed entirely by them.
- Sending a referral and having an appointment booked are two separate events with a gap between them, and the anxious version of this question is nearly always about that gap rather than about the eventual wait.
- The urgent suspected cancer route runs on its own timescale with its own contact arrangements, so handling every referral question identically buries the one that should not be waiting.
- Some services send the patient a letter with a booking reference so they arrange the appointment themselves, which means the person waiting by the phone may already be holding the thing they are waiting for.
How it arrives
- how long is the wait to see a specialist
- has my referral been sent yet
- i was referred two months ago and heard nothing
- how long does the urgent referral take
- who do i chase about my hospital appointment
- can the doctor speed my referral up
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What happens after a referral leaves the practice | Written, checked, sent, acknowledged, then booked by the receiving service. Set out as a sequence with rough durations you are prepared to stand behind, because the gap is what people are actually frightened of. |
|---|---|
| The services where the patient books their own appointment | Which routes send a letter with a booking reference, and what that letter looks like, so somebody recognises it rather than filing it as an acknowledgement and carrying on waiting. |
| Who to chase, and at what point | The hospital booking line, and the point at which chasing the practice instead is the right move. Without the second half a patient bounces between two numbers for weeks. |
| What to do if things change while waiting | The route you want a patient to use if their situation changes before the appointment comes. Keep it as a routing instruction with no clinical wording in it at all. |
The reply
Once a referral leaves us, the hospital or the service books the appointment and we cannot see their list or their dates [1]. Some services send a letter with a booking reference so you arrange it yourself, so it is worth opening anything that arrives from them [2]. If nothing has come at all, the number to chase is on our referrals page. I cannot look up whether a referral has been sent. If anything has changed since you were referred, please ring the surgery rather than waiting for the appointment.
The boundary goes first, because a patient who believes the practice holds the list will keep ringing the practice. The self booking letter is volunteered, since somebody waiting for a phone call will not open an envelope they have assumed is a formality. The last line moves a change out of the chat without sounding like a brush off.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks whether their own referral has gone, how much longer they will wait, or says something has changed since they were referred.
I cannot see your referral or the hospital's list. Please ring the surgery, and use the emergency number if this is urgent. If you would like the team to call you, leave your name, an email and a short message.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a referral has been written, sent or accepted for a named person.
- Never quote a waiting time for a hospital service, because it is not yours and it moves without telling you.
- Never say a wait is normal, or that there is nothing to worry about while somebody waits.
- Never suggest going privately as a way round the queue, because it reads as the practice selling against its own referral.
Questions
- Is this worth answering when the wait is not ours?
- It is one of the best returns on the page. Most of these calls are asking how referrals work, not for a date, and a clear sequence with the chase number at the end ends the conversation in one reply.
- Can it check where a referral got to?
- No. It has no access to any clinical or referral system and cannot look anybody up. It explains the sequence and hands over, which is as far as an honest answer reaches.
- Should the urgent route be described separately?
- Yes, and only in your own published wording. It behaves differently enough that folding it into a general paragraph about referrals is the mistake that matters most here.
Keep reading
- Everything for a medical practiceAdministrative questions a practice can safely automate, the symptom questions it must never touch, and how to word the refusal.
- Handling waiting lists in generalExpectation setting is the whole job: how the list is ordered, how contact is made, and whether a short notice cancellation can reach them.
- Saturday afternoon, and the message is about a repeat prescriptionBank holiday prescriptions, hub appointments held at another surgery and the closed route. What to publish for the hours you are shut.
- The patient is in the right building and at the wrong deskA surgery often shares a building with other services. Reception desks, branch days, the blood clinic elsewhere and permit parking.
- Two complaints at a practice wearing the same wordsMost practice complaints are about getting through, not about care. Separating those, quoting the procedure and routing the rest.
Try it on your own material
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