Self referrals
There are a number of services locally that you are able to make self referrals to.
- Carers
- Children’s speech and language therapy
- Continence service
- Drugs and alcohol
- Exercise
- Maternity
- Mental health
- Physiotherapy
- Sexual health
- Social prescribing
- Stop smoking
- Young carers
- Youth counselling
- Weight management
GP referrals
To request a GP referral:
- phone us on Plowright Swaffham 01760 722797 or Plowright Necton 01760 441344
Provide as much information as you can as this will help us to process your request.
Tracking a referral
To track an existing referral:
- fill out a track a referral form
- phone us on Plowright Swaffham 01760 722797 or Plowright Necton 01760 441344
NHS e-Referral
If your Doctor has referred you to a specialist for further care we will book the next available appointment on your behalf and you will receive a letter from the surgery detailing the location, date and time of this appointment.
If there are no appointments available for us to book, you will receive a letter direct from the chosen hospital.
To track your e-Referral you will need to log into the e-Referral website.
Expedite Referral Requests
We have noticed an increasing number of patients requesting GP appointments or GP letters asking for outpatient appointments to be expedited. This seems to be mostly due to extended waiting times and after having spoken with hospital secretaries.
We very much understand and share the frustration caused by current waiting times for outpatient appointments. Please be aware, this is entirely outside of our control and is the making of a struggling NHS with an imbalance of demand and capacity (workforce).
It is important to note that seeking an expedite letter based solely on waiting times will not get you seen any sooner. When you are referred to hospital, the request is reviewed and ‘triaged’. This means the hospital team decide on the timescale they feel is appropriate for your condition. Another letter from the GP without any new information will not change this. Gradual changes in symptoms are to be expected due to the delayed appointments and will affect most patients; this will not be a reason to expediate the referral.
However, if you believe your symptoms have greatly changed or progressed and therefore require a more urgent outpatient appointment, please inform us of this and the GP will assess your new symptoms. If they feel necessary, we will feed this new information into the hospital department on your behalf for their further triage. We can send a form to complete, via text, email or letter to your address/collect from the Surgery or reply to online requests, that you can reply directly to.
Please be aware the decision to change the level of urgency still lies with the hospital team.
If your query relates to cancelling, booking, or chasing appointments please directly contact the department you were referred to as we just do not have the capacity to make these requests on your behalf. This is also applicable if you are waiting for results from a test organised by a hospital specialist.
Please see links below for more information:
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust: Outpatients (qehkl.nhs.uk)
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust » Outpatient information (nnuh.nhs.uk)
If you wish to feedback to the Hospital or share a concern, then they can be contacted via the information below:
Our commitment is to provide the best and most comprehensive medical care to our patients in a timely fashion.
The use of GP appointments solely to discuss waiting times or chasing up when you may get seen, means our team then have less capacity to deal with other medical problems and this has a negative knock on effect on waiting times.