A national survey has opened to gather feedback to support the development of a new 111 referral standard.
The draft standard is said to be based on a project from 2018 that focused on urgent care information flows, and aims to review and develop a new standard to include “new information from 111 that is useful to the receiver wherever the patient is directed to next”.
The survey is now live to seek views from those who receive referrals, referring services and system suppliers. It’s asking for feedback on the importance of specific data items that should be included in the standard, requiring respondents to score across a scale of: least important, somewhat important, most important, and not needed.
The 36 data items up for review range from gender, pronouns, supporting information such as reported over the counter medication, plans and requested actions, to referrer details about whether the patient influenced the choice of the referred service.
The Professional Record Standards Body, NHS England and Improvement, NHSX and NHS Digital are behind the programme to create the standard, which will span across a wide range of healthcare settings, including community pharmacies, dentists, primary care services, same day emergency care, emergency departments or ambulance services.
Dr James Ray, Emergency Consultant, National Clinical Advisor, 111 First, said: “The PRSB 111 information standard will support the sharing of new relevant information with services referring the onward referral. Your responses will help PRSB finalise the 111 information standard so that it supports the needs of all referrers.”
All responses are anonymous and the survey will close on 7 Dec 2021.
The draft standard will be developed and shared for approval by the end of December 2021, with a final standard aimed for publication by March 2022.
Recently at HTN, we welcomed NHS Digital and NHSX for a live online session focusing on the NHS e-Referral Service, how it is currently helping elective care recovery and what improvements will be made to the service in the future. You can watch the session back here.
