Closure of direct GP referral into routine Leeds Teaching Hospitals Spinal Surgical Service
Date: 13 February 2020
Closure of direct GP referral into routine Leeds Teaching Hospitals Spinal Surgical Service
You may be aware that since September 19th 2019, the routine Leeds Teaching Hospitals Spinal Surgical Service has been removed from the e-RS menu visible to general practitioners. This has been jointly agreed between the trust and commissioners in order to deliver the agreed pathway, which in accordance with the National Low Back and Radicular Pain pathway (2017) requires that referrals for spinal surgical opinion should only be made following specialist triage. Referrals into this service can accordingly only be made by approved spinal assessment services that have been given access to the LTHT Spinal Surgical Service Referral Assessment Service on e-RS.
As before, GPs can continue to refer directly into the urgent spinal service, though access to all urgent spinal surgical pathways are currently being reviewed. In the meantime however, all referrals made into the urgent spinal surgical service are being clinically triaged, and any referrals assessed as non-urgent will be returned to the referrer with the advice to make their referral to their local MSK or spinal treatment service for assessment.