Referrals & Hospital Stays

Your consultation with a doctor or nurse may result in you being referred to a specialist for further assessment or treatment. The doctor or nurse will explain your choices to you and help you to understand what will happen next.

Community referrals, e.g. for X-rays, physiotherapy, exercise or talking therapies, may take place at the surgery or elsewhere, normally Hengrove, Keynsham or Paulton.

Hospital referrals may be NHS or private. If you wish to be seen privately, please make this clear to the doctor who is referring you. Private patients may be insured or self-funding.

NHS referrals are made using the Choose and Book system. This means that you will be given a choice of hospitals, depending on what your referral is for, and you will make the booking yourself. We will write to you with the instructions and a reference number. Simple procedures may be carried out at a main NHS hospital, or at one of the Independent Treatment Centres at Shepton Mallet or Emersons Green, or at a private hospital. More complex procedures are limited to NHS hospitals where a full range of support services is on hand.

If you are expecting a hospital or other appointment and you have not heard anything within four weeks, please ring the surgery secretary (select Option 4).

After a Hospital Stay

When you come out of hospital, you may expect a doctor to get in touch with you. This is not normally the case, because we generally do not know when you are admitted to hospital, or when you are sent home until a few days later.

If you need regular home visits from the District Nurses, this will be arranged before you are sent home from hospital.

It is likely that your medication will be changed when you come out of hospital. The hospital will tell us what has changed, but it is your responsibility to ask our Dispensary for more before you run out.

If you feel that you need to see a doctor urgently after you come out of hospital, you should ring the surgery as early in the morning as possible (from 8.00am) and ask to speak to the duty doctor.