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Guide to the NHS treatment pathway

Gain a grasp of the NHS treatment pathway, and use it to better understand your treatment.
Guide to the NHS treatment pathway
Updated:

The following information is applicable to patients living in England, and being treated by NHS England. No information provided should be taken as formal legal or medical advice.

While every person’s treatment pathway is different, we have compiled an outline of the typical NHS treatment pathway.


First point of contact

In the NHS, your first point of contact tends to be your local GP, walk-in clinics or accident & emergency (A&E). Normally issues can be treated on the day, with follow up appointments being arranged as needed.

However, sometimes more specialist care is required. In this scenario, a clinician will refer you to an appropriate specialist clinician or clinic. This will often be at your local hospital. At this point of referral, patients have the legal right to choice in the NHS

This means that you have the right to request to be seen at your preferred location or by your preferred consultant-led team. For example, you can choose to be seen at a hospital further away but with shorter wait times - our research has found that waiting times can differ by more than 5 months between hospitals for the same treatment.


Scans and diagnostics

To determine whether you need to see a specialist, you may be referred for diagnostic scans or tests. 

You may also be referred for tests/scans while waiting to see a specialist to help accelerate your diagnosis. 

Lastly, while under the care of the specialist, they may refer you for further scans/tests to help confirm your diagnosis and formulate a treatment plan.


Consultations with specialists

Specialist clinicians’ expertise means they can be better placed to investigate symptoms, diagnose causes and decide on the appropriate treatments. Such specialists include cardiologists, dermatologists, orthopaedic surgeons, physiotherapists, specialist nurses and many more. As your care progresses, you may be referred onwards to different specialists where this is appropriate.

Depending on the specific case, the specialist clinician may prescribe medication, order further tests as described above, or refer you for a procedure. 


Procedures and operations

In many cases where medicines are unable to resolve issues, procedures can offer a solution. While ‘procedures’ can mean major surgery, it also includes less-intrusive outpatient procedures like endoscopies and skin biopsies. These procedures may be performed by the specialist who conducted the consultation, or another clinician who specialises in the procedure.

When in your medical interest, you may be asked to return for follow-up consultations or further procedures. This will be communicated to you by your medical team.


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FAQs

Our search features help you easily find and compare NHS services, be it specialist consultations, procedures or scans. Our guides are there to provide clear and concise information about the English health system, helping you to take control of your healthcare.
Find and compare services currently only cover the London area.
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own health services independently, and as a result have different policies and guidance in many instances. While we aim to expand our services to all four nations, currently our guides only apply to patients in England.
All our data is collated directly from providers and indirectly via open source information published by, among other sources, NHS digital, NHS England and the Care Quality Commission. We take a number of steps to ensure the accuracy of our data, however we are ultimately dependent on third-parties, and thus cannot guarantee its reliability.
All enquiries should be directed to the information provided on our contact page. While we aim to reply to all enquiries as soon as possible, please note that replies may take some time.
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