Advice & Guidance Service

Service Overview

Haematology Advice and Guidance is provided by UHBW and NBT and can be accessed via eReferral.

Before requesting advice, please refer to the Haematology Guidelines for Primary Care produced by the UHBW haematologists but also relevant for NBT referrals, as this document may be able to give an answer to your question.

You may also find the Haematology Urgent Suspected Cancer - USC (2WW) guidelines helpful for advice on referral of suspected malignancy.

Please note the A&G services are not a general laboratory enquiry service eg. raised CRPs, polyclonal immunoglobulins are non specific markers and are not a Haematology issue

To enable the consultants to give the best advice possible please consider the following points:

• Give a clear concise history and examination findings- avoid cutting and pasting long lists of consultation notes that are not relevant to the problem in hand.
• Include relevant results, investigations and recent correspondence if appropriate but avoid multiple attachments that can take time to download and make the triage process more cumbersome.
• Ask a clear clinical question and avoid ambiguity.
• Avoid requests for complex patients known to an individual consultant as they are unlikely to be the consultant giving the advice and may not have easy access to details of previous contacts with the patient. In these cases consider writing or emailing the relevant secretary directly.

Advice & Guidance requests are not processed by the referral service. All requests should be submitted directly to the one of the Haematology Advice & Guidance services above using eReferral. 

For Haematology result queries (test advice) at UHBW -  call 0117 342 2708

For Haematology result queries (test advice) at NBT - contact the Autolab Helpdesk 0117 414 8383. Further information is available on the NBT website: Haematology | North Bristol NHS Trust (nbt.nhs.uk)

UHBW Haematology Advice & Guidance

The Haematology A&G service run by UHBristol is a platform to request advice on patient's aged 16 years and over.

Please see the Haematology A&G Steps - UHB (word doc) for guidance on how to submit a request through e-Referral to UHB.

Please process through eRS bypassing the Referral Service. Advice requests should ideally be typed into the free text window of the advice request body on e-RS rather than attaching a separate letter or Word document.  If you attach a Clinical Information Summary, please ensure it is named this, so that clinicians at secondary care can opt to look at it if they wish to turn the request into a referral.

• Haematology (not Haemophillia) Advice - University Hospitals Bristol - RA7

Priority - Routine
Specialty - Haematology
Clinic - Not Otherwise Specified

• Haemoglobinopathy Advice - BHOC - UHBW - RA7

Priority - Routine
Specialty - Haematology
Clinic - Haemoglobinopathies & Red Cell Disorders

NBT Haematology Advice & Guidance

All requests for Advice and Guidance should be submitted by eReferral.

Please see the Haematology A&G Steps - NBT (word doc) for guidance on how to submit a request through e-Referral to NBT.

Please process through eRS bypassing the Referral Service. Advice requests should ideally be typed into the free text window of the advice request body on e-RS rather than attaching a separate letter or Word document.  If you attach a Clinical Information Summary, please ensure it is named this, so that clinicians at secondary care can opt to look at it if they wish to turn the request into a referral.

• Haematology Advice and Guidance - Southmead - RVJ

Priority - Routine
Specialty - Haematology
Clinic - General Haematology (Lab Results, Anaemia, MPNs)

Please note what this advice and guidance service does NOT do:

• Urgent / acute enquiries which should continue to go via the usual routes
• Complex Haematology issues. Please refer in the usual way for an outpatient appointment via e-Referrals.
• Give a second opinion.
• Enquiries about patients already under the care of the clinical haematology speciality

Response times

The waiting time tool for BNSSG GP practices includes a section on A and G waiting times. You will need to download the document and follow the instructions to access the latest information (updated monthly). Please see the Hospital waiting times page.

Efforts are made to ensure the accuracy and agreement of these guidelines, including any content uploaded, referred to or linked to from the system. However, BNSSG ICB cannot guarantee this. This guidance does not override the individual responsibility of healthcare professionals to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual patient, in consultation with the patient and/or guardian or carer, in accordance with the mental capacity act, and informed by the summary of product characteristics of any drugs they are considering. Practitioners are required to perform their duties in accordance with the law and their regulators and nothing in this guidance should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with compliance with those duties.

Information provided through Remedy is continually updated so please be aware any printed copies may quickly become out of date.