In order to maximise Choose and Book performance, as a provider of services, you need to have a robust and accurate Directory of Services. This will ensure referrers can find your services and that referrals into those services are appropriate.

As new clinics are created or services amalgamated or divided, you will need to ensure that the DoS is reviewed to reflect these changes.

If you see an increase in paper referrals to some services then you need to look carefully at your service definitions to ensure that referrers are able to find services easily.

Here are some ideas for optimising your DoS and improving Choose and Book usage.

SNOMED

Information is now available to help you maximise the benefit of using SNOMED and all future SNOMED updates will be made available here.

Specialty and Clinic Type

Revised information is now available along with a form which can be used to submit requests for additional Specialty and Clinic Types.

Named Clinicians

If you accept referrals to a named clinician on paper, you should accept them via Choose and Book. Choose and Book has the ability to support referrals to named clinicians and can be set up to do so. You can offer named clinician slots within a pooled service to ensure that all available appointment slots are put to best use.

In order to support named clinician referrals, those clinicians must be issued with Smartcards, and their names recorded as part of the relevant service definition. Specific appointment slots for those named clinicians should then be allocated on the hospital Patient Administration System (PAS).

The factsheet Making Named Clincian referrals using Choose and Book (PDF 484Kb) gives you full details on how to amend your DoS to enable named clincian functionality.

In some instances providers have encountered difficulties in setting this function, due to incomplete clinician data. The guidance 'Problems in Publishing Named Clinician Slots (25Kb)' gives information on how to resolve this issue.

Finding problems on your DoS

A good indicator that your DoS is not working well, is an increase in rejected and redirected referrals to specific services. It is a good idea to check ALL referrals that are deemed to be inappropriate for the service they were booked into. The search methods used by the referrer are noted on the Appointment Details screen. You can clearly see if clinical terms were used, and if so which clinical terms; along with the specialty and, if appropriate, the clinic type that were selected.

As an example, if the referrer has used a SNOMED search for a specific procedure, but the service the patient has booked into does not provide that procedure, then you will need to review your list of terms and edit the term as required. Please note, if a referrer is searching using clinical terms then ONLY services that contain that term will be listed.

Service Naming Conventions

A naming convention for services on the Directory of Services has been developed and approved by the National Clinical Reference Panel. This naming convention is used in order to enable referrers to easily identify the most relevant services, regardless of the provider. The format for service names which should be used by all service providers is:

Service description - Department name - Organisation name - ODS(NACS) code

It is important that the service description portion of the service name is as meaningful as possible so that referrers and their patients can select the most appropriate choice of service to create a shortlist. This is particularly important because filtering services by clinic type often results in quite a long list of services to pick from. To help referrers to be sure that they have found the right service, they need to be carefully and consistently named.

Service names should not exceed 100 characters in length and should be entered in title case, not capitals.

Department name is optional and should be omitted if providers are short of space.

The service location is displayed to the referrer in the search screen. It is therefore not necessary to include this information in the service name.