Under 18 ‘urgent’ hospital referral - how long?

[Verbena17]

Hi
GP referral letter - classed as Urgent was sent to hospital on 2nd dec.
I just called hospital again today to ask if he’d been triaged and she said no, not yet!
I said I thought if it was ‘urgent’ they had to be seen within two weeks and she said no, that’s cancer patients only.

Anybody know how long the NHS waiting time policy is for other urgent referrals?

It’s for chest pain/heart pain with right branch bundle block & prolonged QTc.

I work in nhs admin, a GP refers a patient as urgent the referral is then triaged by the consultant however they don't always agree with the 'urgent' request. The consultant may deem it something that can wait as a routine. Urgent as in my local Trust are anything from 4 plus weeks depending on how busy the clinic is. All you can do is wait for it to be triaged really

Our 7 month old had an urgent referral and it took from August to November for her to be seen! There were lots of emails and chasing done by her nurses but still nothing for a while.

Thank you both.
@monicagellerbing - the thing is, the GP referral letter (which I got them to print off for me to see) doesn’t necessarily explain in such a way that seems urgent. For example, it says ‘left sided chest pain, often associated with anxiety…’, and he hasn’t put the shooting heart pain that our son gets.

The worrying thing is I really need them to rule out Long QT Syndrome because the obvious increased risk of that when left unmonitored/treated is Sudden Cardiac Death.

At the hospital, you have to chase with Appointment Centre who don’t even know how long triage list is - shall I just call paeds outpatients again and explain?

’It’s for chest pain/heart pain with right branch bundle block & prolonged QTc

so he has a diagnosis? In which case they know what’s wrong and how urgent it is?

but then in your subsequent post you say you need them to rule out long QT?

so which?

if the hospital have the referral you phoning repeatedly won’t speed things up. Everyone thinks their case should be prioritised, they will do it in clinical need.

if there’s new symptoms that arise take him back to the GP.

So on his last few ECGs they said right bundle branch block (RBBB) with prolonged QTc.
i have no idea whether every long QTc means Long QT Syndrome or whether you can have them and then they disappear.

The GP letter states ‘Left sided chest pain, RBBB & Prolonged QTc.
When you say take him back to the GP and everyone thinks they’re a priority, this is a boy with an eating disorder with very low calorie intake, underweight and shooting heart pain. If he does have Long QT Syndrome, i want them to find out for sure and treat him….as opposed to him suddenly drifting off in his sleep and not waking up! I don’t think I’m overreacting with the urgent side of it.
But thank you for you for commenting and your suggestions.

Oh and when I asked the appointment centre lady ‘do they split the referrals as they come into urgent and non-urgent?’, her reply was ‘i don’t know - you would think that would be the sensible thing to do but I honestly don’t know’.

She didn’t fill me with confidence 😩

Google for the consultants email address

and email directly. NHS admin is dire. We've become a banana republic.

I had an urgent ENT referral and waited 4 months. Problem was bad enough I had 2 hospital admissions and they just kept treating the complication then kicking me out rather than dealing with the underlying cause. 6 more months until they dealt with it and that was a cancellation slot.

@GarlicSauce good idea - I’ll have to ring again and ask which consultant it is for, as GP just states to: consultant cardiologist & hospital name.

@ConfessionsOfAMumDramaQueen that’s not good either.

Are they under a team for the eating disorder? They may be able to either reassure you or expedite the refferal if they are concerned.

Was the diagnosis the automatic one the machine does or from the Dr manually reading it? The machine ones are notoriously unreliable and can come up with quite alarming things which when checked by someone with experience are fine.

Have a look at Cardiac Risk in the Young if he’s 14 or over.

they have long waiting lists post lockdown but if you’re lucky you may get a spot.

www.c-r-y.org.uk/screening/

Eating team do regular ECGs and sent it off to be looked at by cardiologist and it was their reading of it that stated those things.

Thank you so much for this - yes, he’s 17, almost 18.
I will look for screening with them - great idea!

There’s nowhere on the screening list near us.
however, I’ll try and find a private ecg screening clinic as I can then have more evidence to speak to hospital with.

Have called a Bupa consultant in Cambridge but they don’t see children!
Waiting for a Northants one to ring me back to see if she see children.

How worrying for you.
I agree with ring and get specialist name and email address.
Send them a really polite but specific email and mention the eating disorder too.
Would you consider private?
Hope you get it sorted soon.

If you have a friendly contact in the eating disorders team I would ring them and ask them to check where the referral is in the system. They may be able to expedite it if they're in same trust

I will try.
Yes we have Bupa but very few cardio consultants see children privately in our area. Ironically waiting for one who works at the NHS hospital he’s been referred to to get back to me about private work.

Thanks yes, I’m having a call with the eating clinic care cordinator today so I’ll ask her for advice. They aren’t really linked up very well mind you. It basically involves me chasing everyone!

Same in our department - "urgent" referrals can take 3 months. It's just the pure volume of referrals -v- number of appointments available.

Do they take the urgents and split them from non-urgent? Then triage the urgents first?

Do they take the urgents and split them from non-urgent? Then triage the urgents first?

The vetting consultants decide what is urgent regardless of how it has been referred. If they think it's routine it would be vetted as such. The urgent referrals will be appointed before routine however the department I work in urgent referrals can still wait three months. Also, no-one will know which consultant you would see until the appointment is made

Thanks @tass1960 .
Well that’s rubbish then. Makes a bit of a joke of having urgent/non-urgent to start with!
i have to say, the way the referral letters are worded would (I imagine) also make a big difference.

I’ve never asked the GP’s for copies of referral letters before (you’d think they would just give you them anyway) but thank goodness I did - or I wouldn’t have known about the prolonged QTc.

i called C-R-Y this afternoon to ask for some advice and the kind lady was helpful. She’s going to speak to her manager tomorrow and ask if she knows anyone local to me who could screen him privately and said it’s understandable that we would want to rule out long qt syndrome asap. Not sure if they’ll know of anyone but at least it’s something.

I don't think it's rubbish. The consultants who vet the referrals are the specialists not the GP and if the specialists treated every urgent referral urgently no-one else would ever be seen.

It wouldn't be routine for a patient to be copied into a referral either. In my trust the majority of referrals are done electronically so there wouldn't be a physical letter as such.

I asked them to print it off for me. They didn’t question it.