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Hospital prescriptions and tests

We know it can be difficult to navigate the NHS at times, who is responsible for what, when are you going to get appointments or prescriptions. These are the expectations and agreement between hospitals and general practice locally:

Prescriptions

• Prescriptions for any immediately necessary or urgent medication (required within 28 days of outpatient assessment) should be provided by the hospital clinic.

• Once a clinic letter is written (can take weeks/months depending on the department), it is usually electronically transmitted to us. Our admin/coding team then checks the letter to ensure all diagnoses etc are coded on your record. The prescription admin team will then review any changes to your repeat medication and send on to one of the doctors to read and action any other elements.

• We ask that you allow at least 28 days from your clinic appointment to expect any changes/prescriptions to be issued to ensure the letter has been processed as above.

• Some specialist (ie amber on the formulary) medication should be initiated by the hospital clinic, we MAY be able to take over prescribing depending on the nature of the drug. Some medications (red/black on the formulary) are not to be prescribed by GPs.

• You should received 28 days of medication following hospital admission.

• If you have a test undertaken by a hospital clinic/admission e.g. urine test, swab and need antibiotics - the hospital need to arrange this prescription for you.

Test results

• This includes blood, urine, swabs, scans, camera tests and more.

• If a test has been requested or arranged by the hospital teams, they should communicate the result to you, please contact that team (usually via their secretary) for the result. 

Referrals

• Hospitals doctors can arrange referral to other departments where they feel it appropriate.

• We often get asked to chase up or change the urgency of a clinic appointment - we are only able to ask specialists to expedite your appointment if there is a change to the clinical symptoms/severity. We ask that you are patient and do not contact us to chase up your referral unless there is a worsening/change of your symptoms.

• If you have already been referred, you can contact The Outpatient Booking Line on 01904 726400 to amend, cancel or chase any referrals. Once processed by the Referral Support Service (can take up to 4 weeks), your referral will be visible on the NHSapp.

GP follow up

• Occasionally patients attend a hospital clinic and ask about symptoms which are not related to the specialty or the original referral. e.g. a worrying skin lesion in an orthopaedic clinic. The specialist may ask you to seek advice from the GP Practice - please request this appointment like you normally would via the prioryCARE form/phone.

• We sometimes receive clinic letters that ask us to follow up on a certain symptom or condition - we will  usually send a text (SMS) to remind you how to get in touch to request this.

Private clinic appointments

• Your private clinic is responsible for prescribing medications but we will sometimes be able to continue prescriptions for medication that NHS GPs would usually start and monitor. If your private clinic suggests referral to an NHS clinic, they can arrange this directly.

• If you opt to have a surgical procedure privately in the UK or abroad, any post-op treatment or monitoring should be undertaken privately. We recommend that patients are clear about how aftercare will be coordinated and provided after the surgery abroad as the NHS (hospital or GP surgery) will not take this work on.