Booking, referrals and appointments (with IT)

Appointment types booked via technology could include:

• Pre-Bookable Walk-In Appointments
• Remote consultations
• Virtual Visits pilot appointments

Patients may book an appointment using a website, an app, the phone. They may also make an appointment in person.

Systems and suppliers (bookings) with NHS assurance include:

• NHS National Booking Service (NBS): used for COVID-19 vaccination appointments and may be used for the booking of some other NHS services in the future. From October 14th some pharmacies began pioloting use of NBS for flu vaccine appointment systems.
• Booking systems with NHS Digital assurance via the Digital Care Services Framework.
• The NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS).

Apps with appointment systems assured by the NHS:

• NHS App
• List of Apps / systems which have received IM1 integration assurance (some but not all IM1 apps have met GP appointment standards)

The use of ‘standards’ within the health sector enables people, devices and systems to communicate in a more efficient and electronic manner. Standards can also reduce the need for health and care workers to ‘re-key’ booking related information and for patients to need to repeat themselves about their bookings.

There are several key IT standards related to booking and referrals:

• Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS) – is an interoperability standard for healthcare IT systems that is intended to enable booking and referral information to be sent between NHS service providers quickly, safely and in a format that is useful to clinicians. The ambition is it will eventually be available in all care settings and encompass other boking and referral standards.
• GP Connect appointment standards
• Patient Facing Services
• Interface mechanism (IM1) NHS standards

The CP ITG held a workshop to formulate views on this topic, click on the link to find out more read: CP ITG views about IT relating to booking, referrals and appointments.