Manage a referral without sending (Print and Post)

There may be occasions when you want to send a referral outside of the OPERA system. Examples may include:

The patient is out of area and you cannot find a suitable provider on our DOS
The patient doesn't have a GP and so cannot be referred - so you can print and give the referral to them to take to a GP following registration
The patient prefers to take a copy of the referral and visit their GP rather than being sent electronically

In order to do this, you can select the 'DO NOT SEND - PRACTICE WILL PRINT AND MANAGE - IGNORE TRAVEL TIMES' provider from the provider selector in the eERS system.

Selecting the appropriate provider

This provider is available for Routine or Urgent referrals only. Here is an example of selecting the provider from the DOS when referring a patient:

In this example, we simply use the search box to get the correct provider, just search PRINT AND MANAGE to locate the provider.

Status in OPERA

You will see the following status in OPERA:

This indicates that the referral documentation has been produced but has not been sent by OPERA. It is the practices responsibility to ensure that the referral is now managed internally and we recommend that practices develop an SOP for the management of these referrals. You should access the referral documents and download the PDF which you can then email, print or post as appropriate.

Please note that a GP notification is not made when managing the referral internally.

Downloading the referral to manage internally

Simply press the blue documents icon to access the document, select download referral and the PDF will be downloaded to your computer.

If you have any concerns please raise a help ticket via the blue bubble to get assistance from our team.