Is there a reason that in this process we have to create a referral before we search for and retrieve healthcare services?

e-Referral Service (e-RS)
1

Hi

As we are following the process for creating referrals that is outlined here:

https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/guides-and-documentation/building-healthcare-software/referrals-and-bookings/e-referral-service/create-referrals-and-bookings-as-a-referrer

It indicates that we should create the referral and then search for and retrieve healthcare service details.

Is there a reason we need to create the referral before searching or is it fine to do the search first and then we could either use the details to create the referral or decide not to create a new referral?

2

Hi @Pete_Salisbury - It depends on your use case, and if/how you’re intending to store healthcare service information.

There are two main reasons for inclusion of the healthcare service endpoints (A033/35):

  1. Furnishing the service information - Once a referral is created and you have a record in your system, you may want to expand the information available to the user by using the data via those endpoints (e-RS UI example below). We don’t furnish the API with all this service info so it depends if it’s valuable to your users post-initiation. One of the main data points we’ve heard from evidence is the service provider contact for any chasing/follow-up activity.

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  1. Supported referral flows - If your system has knowledge of all the referrals created/managed and the associated services, then use of the healthcare service endpoints may be secondary. The main use case is that your system will need to understand the supported flows before attempting to book or ‘send for triage’ to know which are supported by the service, i.e. A015 → A016 OR A016 only. Service search (A010) will give you the requestflowtype also, so depends on the latency between the referral being created and referral being actioned via ‘arrange triage’ or ‘arrange appointment’.

Hope that all makes sense, reach out if it’s easier to chat.

Thanks,
Z.