Getting one depends on who you need to see and where you need to go. Sometimes, you can refer yourself for certain things, like counseling or help to quit smoking (check out Stop Smoking – Healthy Hounslow). But most of the time, you’ll need to chat with a clinician to get a referral.

Why’s that? Well, sometimes you need to meet certain requirements before your referral can be accepted. Things like blood tests, urine tests, or stool tests might be needed. Plus, it’s important to talk about your symptoms because sometimes we can manage things right here in primary care without needing to send you elsewhere. So, don’t hesitate to reach out and have a chat with us!

We will do this by either speaking to the hospital directly or emailing them. We will keep you up to date with any communication between the two of us. Please understand that this can be a slow process, and on both ends there may be a wait for communication.This is because both we and the hospital are busy. In the interim you can always call the hospital as well, explaining that the GP surgery has been in contact, and that a response is waiting. You can use this link to find the contact details of the department that you have been referred to for West Middlesex Hospital

In most hospitals, referrals will be triaged before assignment to a consultant – this will mean that they will have a look to see if:

1. The referral is appropriate
2. If the severity of the referral is correct

This may mean that your referral downgrades from urgent to routine. The hospital will inform you of this, and if you feel as if this is not correct and that you need to be seen on a urgent basis, you can go about this in a couple of different ways. You can speak to the hospital and explain to the admin staff the severity of your case. They may forward this feedback to the consultant or they may ask you to speak to us. 

You can contact the West Middlesex Hospital using this link

 It may be because the consultant has already provided us with a management plan. This could be a change in your medication or using different techniques to manage your symptoms.

The consultant may want more investigations. This could be something like an xray. They may want a more thorough history which may mean you will need to come in and see a clinician again.

You will be informed if your referral has failed– as it resets the referral, meaning you may have to wait longer.

There are different departments and a wide range of specialists who can all input in your care. This may be in the community such as dieticians, podiatrists or a diabetic specialists and you can see them all in the local area. Consultants will all be located in hospital. There are some hospitals called tertiary care and only secondary care can refer to these. We will inform you if we cannot refer to a specific hospital and will ask you to make another choice.

Unless we need to do more investigations, we will do this internally. We will not contact you apart from telling you that the referral is complete. We will need the hospital letter and the consultants request before sending this referral off. Also, remember that letters do not come to us straight away. They can take weeks and months for us to receive them. If you have a copy of the letter you can send that across to us so we can action it quickly.

This can definitely happen, we will need a couple of things from you such as what the issue is and which consultant and department you would like to go to. It can take up to 48 hours for you to receive this, and we will need your email address. They may come back and ask to provide more information about your case and we will be happy to look into this for you