My planned care - you and your referral
Following your referral, you may wish to contact the hospital or treatment centre you have been referred to. Click here for further information.
2ww wait referrals
What is an urgent referral?
If your GP has arranged for you to have tests or to see a hospital doctor (specialist) urgently, this may be to investigate your symptoms further. You might have some tests to find out what is wrong and whether or not it could be cancer. Your urgent referral explained.
How quickly will I be seen?
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, you may have to wait longer for your appointment. Some of the UK nations have targets around how quickly you would normally be seen, but there may be delays at this time.
In England, an urgent referral means that you should see a specialist within 2 weeks.
Please contact 01925 662744 if you have not heard about your referral in 2 weeks
Does this mean I have cancer?
It is normal to worry when you are urgently referred to see a specialist by your GP. However, more than 9 in every 10 people (90%) referred this way will not be diagnosed with cancer.
Routine referrals
Waiting for a hospital appointment after a referral
We know that waits for many hospital services are long at the moment. This page explains how referrals work once we have made them, what we can and cannot do to help, and the best ways to get an update.
What happens after we refer you
When we send a referral, it goes to the hospital team, and they take over from there. The hospital decides how urgently you need to be seen (this is called triage), where you are placed on their waiting list, and when your appointment will be. From that point, your place in the queue and the timing of your care are managed by the hospital, not by us.
What we can and cannot do
We want to be honest that, once a referral has been made, there is very little we can add:
We cannot speed up (expedite) a referral or move you up the list. The hospital sets the order based on clinical need, and we are not able to override that.
We do not know how long you will wait. We do not have access to the hospital’s waiting lists or booking system, so we cannot see where you are in the queue or give you a date.
Contacting us for an update will not change your position or how quickly you are seen.
For all these reasons, if you are waiting, contacting the hospital directly will usually get you further than contacting us.
How to check your wait or get an update
Check the NHS App. If you are 16 or over, you can see your referral, your appointments and an estimated waiting time, and for many services you can book, change or cancel. This is usually the quickest way to get information about your own referral.
Call the hospital’s appointments line. For Salford Royal, the outpatient appointments and booking line is 01925 275 512. They can confirm whether your referral has been received and answer questions about your appointment.
Contact the department directly. If you know which department you were referred to, use the contact details on any letter you have had from them, or look the department using the linkb elow. If they do not answer the phone you should email them:
If you cannot get through to the department, the hospital’s Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) can help point you in the right direction.
When it is worth contacting us
There is one situation where contacting us does make a difference: if your symptoms or situation have changed significantly since we referred you. If things have become noticeably worse, or something new has developed, please let us know. We can pass updated information to the hospital, which may affect how urgently they see you.
If nothing has changed since the referral, an update from us will not move your place in the queue or bring your appointment forward. For a general update, the hospital is the better place to ask.
Please also contact us if the hospital tells you they have no record of your referral. We can check it was sent and resend it if needed.
If you become much more unwell while you are waiting, do not wait for the appointment. Contact us or call NHS 111, and in an emergency call 999.