What is the Directory of Services?

The Directory of Services (DOS) is the core of the Choose and Book application.

• It holds information that describes the services that organisations offer;
• It enables referring clinicians to search for appropriate services to which they can refer patients; and 
• It provides a window through which providers can display their services.

Service providers build and publish their services on the DOS in Choose and Book. This in turn enables referrers to list those services when searching for appropriate services for their patients. In the case of primary care services, commissioners need to specifically choose (commission) which services they wish to appear on the Primary Care Menu.

Services are built by Service Definers, using the service definition tool. They are categorised by specialty and then broken down into clinic types. A spreadsheet containing all current Specialties and their associated clinic types is maintained by the National Clinical Reference Panel. 

An update to specialties and clinic types took place on 5th March 2010. These changes introduced new specialties of Speech and Language, Occupational Therapy, Orthotics and Prosthetics, and Complementary Medicine, as well a small change to Child and Adolescent services, and changes to Surgery-Breast Specialty to facilitate symptomatic breast referrals.

Once a service is defined and built it can be published. Services published on the Secondary Care Menu (those services belonging to Acute and Foundation Trusts as well as many Independent Sector Providers) are available to referrers throughout the country. Services published on the Primary Care Menu are commissioned within Choose and Book to appear only to those referrers within the local organisation.

Information published in the DOS should contain enough detail to allow the referring clinician to be confident that the services they have offered to their patients are appropriate, while allowing the service provider clinician to be confident that they receive appropriate referrals.

Service Specific Booking Guidance is entered by a service definer within the organisation providing the services. This helps referrers to select clinically appropriate services. The guidance includes:

• A list of specific conditions treated;
• Procedures performed;
• Exclusions for each service;
• Service appropriate SNOMED clinical terms;
• Investigations required prior to booking an outpatient appointment; and
• Instructions for the patient which will appear on appointment confirmation printouts.

Activities prior to collecting and loading your Directory of Services

There are two key activities which need to be completed before being able to load services onto the Directory of Services.

• Smartcard allocation - Those responsible for inputting the services (Service Definers) need to be registered with Smartcards and trained. In addition, those who will process referrals will also need to be registered and issued with Smartcards and then allocated to the relevant service’s workgroup.
• Organisational Data Service (ODS - formerly known as NACS) - Service Definers should ensure that all service locations have been defined by the ODS.

Smartcards and Workgroups

In order to enter data onto Choose and Book, Service Definers need to obtain Smartcards from their local Registration Authority. More information is available from the Registration Authority (N3 access required) page on the NHS Connecting for Health website.

Service provider clinicians and support staff also need to be allocated to particular services so they can view and process information relating to the bookings and referrals received into that service. In order to do this, they must be allocated to a workgroup. This is a group of staff who need access to patient bookings and/or referral letters relating to patients being seen in this service. Prior to a workgroup going live, all staff allocated to it will need to be issued with Smartcards.

Choose and Book enables Service Definers to create, update and deactivate workgroups.

Full guidance on setting up defining services and workgroups is provided in the Service Definer user manual in the Training section.

Location codes

The location of a service defined on the Choose and Book Directory of Services is one of the key factors to be taken into consideration when defining services. In order for referrers and patients to choose the most appropriate and convenient place to be seen, where an organisation provides the same service from two different sites, then it must be set up as two separate services.

Locations are loaded into Choose and Book from the Spine Directory Services (SDS), which in turn takes information from the ODS. For NHS trusts, there is a nightly upload to the SDS from the ODS. For the Independent Sector this upload is made on an ad hoc basis. There is a daily upload from the SDS to the Choose and Book application.

• Trusts can check which locations have been identified for their organisation from the ODS online search facility, to search by organisation code (N3 access required).
• Trusts should submit new locations or any changes to existing locations to ODS, via their ODS lead. 

Collecting data for the Directory of Services

Service definers should record all the information that is to be loaded onto the Directory on a template which should be filed for ease of reference when changes are required. A Directory of Services entry template has been developed so entries can be copied and pasted into the Choose and Book application. Alternatively, trusts can modify this template or develop their own.

Further Information

The following links provide more detailed information regarding setting up your DOS.

Directory of Services (PDF 118Kb)

Describing Services Effectively (PDF 119Kb)

Independent Sector Providers Directory of Services (PDF 41Kb)

Making Named Clinician Referrals using Choose and Book (PDF 484Kb)

More information regarding Directory of Services is available on the Routine Activities for Service Providers page. For organisations who have a well established DOS, guidance on Getting the best from your DOS is also available.