Hospital Care
If you have been referred to an NHS specialist, or see one privately, the information on this page will help you know what to expect from your specialist and GP surgery.
Waiting Times
Hospital waiting lists can be very long. We understand this can cause frustration and uncertainty. GPs have no control over hospital waiting lists. We do not have any information about your place on the waiting list, or special ‘hotline’ numbers to contact the hospital on. Please do not call us, or book an appointment simply to ask about your place on a hospital waiting list
When waiting for your first appointment, you can call the hospital appointments hub:
| University Hospitals Sussex | 0300 303 8360 |
| Royal Alexandra Hospital Children’s Hospital | 0300 131 6770 |
|
Eastbourne District General Hospital |
0300 131 4600 |
If you have already seen a specialist, and you have questions about your follow up appointment or a procedure, please call their team directly (their contact details will be on the letters they have sent you).
Expediting appointments
Patients are often told by the hospital to ‘get a letter from the GP’ so that their appointment can be expedited, or made more urgent. This is in fact unnecessary and creates an additional administrative burden on already stretched GP services.
Hospitals are contractually obliged to communicate directly with patients and respond directly and appropriately to their queries, including specifically questions about appointments. Failure to do so represents a breach of their contract. If you feel the hospital are not meeting this obligation, please ask to speak to their Patient Advice and Liaison service (PALS)
Please be aware that simply waiting a longer time than you would wish does not make your request urgent. Unfortunately, in the current situation, many hospital departments have very long waiting lists. We cannot write letters to expedite your appointment for this reason. After making an initial referral, we will only write to update your specialist if there has been a genuine worsening of your condition that we believe requires more urgent attention from them. However, even in these circumstances please contact them directly first to discuss your concerns.
Hospital Tests and Results
If your hospital team arrange any tests for you, they are responsible for informing you of the results, answering any queries you might have about them, and arranging any further action that is required. This is both a contractual and a GMC requirement.
We do not get sent a copy of your hospital test results directly, and usually only find out about them once your specialist has discussed the results with you and sent us a clinic letter- usually you know about your results before we do!
This also applies to private investigations. If a patient has any private tests, the results should be reviewed and acted on by the private service.
If you wish to chase up the results of your hospital tests, or have any concerns or queries about what the results mean, please contact your specialist.
Please note– GPs do NOT prescribe sedation for hospital investigations and procedures e.g. for claustrophobic patients who are due to have an MRI scan. If any sedative medication is required, this should be provided by the specialist arranging or supervising the investigation or procedure.
Hospital Prescriptions
Urgent Medications
All URGENT medications recommended by your specialist (e.g. medication that must be started within a few days) must be prescribed by the specialist directly. They are contractually obligated to do this.
It can take several weeks for a letter from the specialist to be sent to the GP, and then another 2-5 working days for the GP surgery to process the letter (due to the huge volume of letters received every day). GPs cannot prescribe anything on behalf of a specialist without a request in writing from them. Therefore if a medication is needed urgently, it must be prescribed by your specialist.
Sometimes your specialist will provide you with a prescription that can only be used in the hospital pharmacy. You must obtain this medication from the hospital pharmacy. We are not able to ‘convert’ these prescriptions to a standard ‘FP10’ (green prescription) that can be used in any pharmacy. Please ask your specialist to provide you with an FP10 (green prescription) if you do not wish to use the hospital pharmacy.
Non-urgent Medications.
Your specialist may ask your GP to prescribe non urgent medications for you. After receiving the written request from the specialist, it may take between 2-5 working days for the GP to process the medication request.
Some specialist medications are classified as ‘Red Drugs’ which means they can only be prescribed by a specialist and we will be unable to prescribe them, even if the specialist asks us to do so.
Some specialist medications can be prescribed by us under a Shared Care Agreement
Medications from Private Consultations
Please note GPs are under no obligation to issue medications following a private consultation or convert a privately issued prescription to a GP issued one. Requests will be reviewed on an individual basis and if agreed, will be processed in line with the non-urgent medication process and timescale as described above.
Medications for hospital Procedures
Your specialist will inform you if you are required to make any changes to your usual medication before a procedure. Please contact them if you have any queries about this.
If you need to take any additional medication for the purpose of the procedure, this must be provided by the specialist.
Fit Notes
If you need a Fit Note (sick note) following a hospital admission, procedure or operation, please ask for this before you leave. The hospital have an obligation to provide you with a Fit note for the full duration that they expect you to need it (sometimes patients tell us the specialist recommended that they take 6 weeks off work but only given them a note for 2 weeks! This is inconvenient for the patient and needlessly creates extra work for your GP).
If you have a follow up with your specialist, and you need an extension to your fit note for the same condition, your specialist should also provide this for you.
