Appointment slots not available even after successful poll

e-Referral Service (e-RS)
1

We are currently experiencing an issue while polling appointment slots from the NHS e-Referral Service APIs.

Polling has been successfully completed; however, no appointment slots are being returned for the Riomed service(Service ID: 6709562). The API responses do not contain any slot data.

Please find the request and response details below:

  1. API Name – A015 - Retrieve appointment slots

  2. Request Data -

    1. Referral Id – 000049826559

    2. Headers -
      {

“Authorization”: “Bearer Gs5owr8NmOGPalNuiotoS3p48yjv”,

“nhsd-ers-business-function”: “REFERRING_CLINICIAN”,

“NHSD-End-User-Organisation-ODS”: “C84665”,

“user-id”: “555340925109”,

“x-correlation-id”: “ec63d151-521a-4cdf-9896-4e7f4f657614”,

“nhsd-ers-comm-rule-org”: “C84665”,

“accept”: “application/fhir+json”

}

  1. Response Data –

{

“id”: “a8095466-9e25-4089-ac2d-b4752a1d3901”,

“meta”: {

"lastUpdated": "2026-04-17T09:01:46.578Z",

"profile": \[

  [http://hl7.org/fhir/STU3/StructureDefinition/Bundle](http://hl7.org/fhir/STU3/StructureDefinition/Bundle)

\]

},

“resourceType”: “Bundle”,

“type”: “searchset”,

“total”: 0,

“link”: [

{

  "relation": "self",

  "url": [https://int.api.service.nhs.uk/referrals/FHIR/STU3/Slot?schedule.actor%3AHealthcareService=6709562&appointmentType=ROUTINE&\_count=20&status=free&\_include=Slot%3Aschedule&page=1](https://int.api.service.nhs.uk/referrals/FHIR/STU3/Slot?schedule.actor%3AHealthcareService=6709562&appointmentType=ROUTINE&_count=20&status=free&_include=Slot%3Aschedule&page=1)

}

],

“entry”: []

}

Additionally, we have attached a screenshot of the appointment slot polling from the NHS portal for your reference.

Uploaded image
Uploaded image308×277 8.47 KB

We would appreciate it if you could investigate this issue and advise on the next steps to resolve it.

2

Hi Vaibhav, i will look into this now :slight_smile:

3

Hi George, Thanks. :slightly_smiling_face:

4

Hi Vaibhav, apologies for the wait.

After looking at the int database, I can see that the service has no free slots, (99 are occupied, 3253 are unavailable). Therefore the API is returning the correct result.

Please ask your PAS (Riomed) to publish new available slots for service ID 6709562.

Thanks, George

5

Just to add to George’s reply - if you do not have a PAS connected to the INT environment, you will need to contact the ITOC team.

We reference this step in section 2.42 if you if you were not aware (in the link below) - instructions/additional info on that page :slightly_smiling_face:

https://digital.nhs.uk/services/e-referral-service/api/integration-process/stage-2-build