Referrals

You can book yourself in to see the following services: physiotherapy, psychology and counselling, antenatal care in pregnancy, pregnancy terminations & sexual health. See for more information here

The majority of other medical conditions are dealt by the GP. If your condition needs hospital treatment then your clinician will refer you to a Hospital. You can usually choose the hospital you go to. In our experience local hospitals are best as they have access to any follow-up services such as physiotherapy after operations. Some local hospitals, like the Royal Free, have many sites, that may be further away that you would need to travel to for your care. For example most surgery is based at the Chase Farm site which is further to travel to from West Hampstead.

Due to current NHS pressures Waiting times for hospital appointments can be quite long, and because of this appointments may not be available for us to book.This may mean that you will be placed on a waiting list and that the hospital will contact you directly with an appointment. We sympathise if this is the case and would encourage patients to contact the hospital directly for concerns around appointments, as we have no influence over the waiting times.

If we are able to directly book an appointment we will inform you either by text or email of your appointment details.  Otherwise do contact the hospital you have chosen directly to follow up on appointments times.

Please be aware that all our NHS referrals are reviewed and vetted by the Hospital. This process may occur initially when the referral is first received or later after the appointment is booked, or both, including more closer to the proposed appointment time. Their doctors may decline your referral with comments, actions or suggestions to us if they feel the referral doesn’t meet national or local guidelines or they feel we try more things first.

If you are unhappy with the any aspect of your Hospital appointment, we have produced an information page for our local hospitals to help with this

Please contact the hospitals directly in the first instance as we are rarely able to assist.

For Certain Procedures

For certain procedures and operations such as minor surgery, tonsillectomy, hernias, gallbladder removal as well as others, there are separate guidelines criteria must be met before funding for a referral or procedure is approved or accepted. So we will inform you at the time if a referral does not meet the criteria.

Royal Free Hospital Sites

The Royal Free Hospital has sites in Hampstead, Edgware, Finchley, Chase Farm and Barnet. For surgical issues, much of the activity including the outpatients and operations occur at Chase Farm, which is not close. Please consider how easy it is for you to attend this site and if it is difficult, it may be better to be referred to University College London, The Whittington Hospital or St Mary's Hospital which are all much closer.

Urgent Referrals

Please note all Urgent Referrals are sent directly to the Hospitals who then review them themselves and arrange the appointments accordingly. Often waiting times for Urgent Referrals can be still several months. We do not have any influence over these decisions that are decided on by clinical need and the amount of appointments currently available.

Possible Cancer Referrals

If your referral is for a possible cancer diagnosis or to rule this out, you should be seen within 2 weeks for your first appointment. We will book this appointment for you and contact you within 1 working day to let you know when you will be seen.

If we cannot find an appointment for you then we will put you on a list for the hospital to book you in and you should be contacted within 3 working days by the hospital.

If you do not hear from anyone within 3 working days then do contact us.

As an additional safety measure our own referral clerk will check to ensure you have been seen within this timeframe.

Follow-up Hospital appointments

Follow up Hospital appointments are arranged by hospitals directly and we have no involvement or control over these appointments. If you wish to enquire about these or have concerns about any follow up appointments please do contact the Hospital directly. If you are very unhappy with your Hospital service, waiting times or treatments then please contact the Hospital's own Patient Advisory Liaison Service (PALS). See link the link above for helpful contacts.

Referrals outside of Local Hospitals

We will ask you at your appointment where you wish to be referred to. Some patients may request to attend a hospital that is not local to North Central London. In our experience these referrals are often rejected in favour of local residents and may also create difficulties with any follow up such as physiotherapy. Do consider this when choosing your provider.

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