Connecting for Health (CfH) says Choose and Book has now been used to refer over five million patients into specialist care.
CfH, the DH agency responsible for the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), says all NHS hospitals are now using Choose and Book, along with 88% of all GP practices in England.
In total GP practices are now sending around 15,070 referrals every day through the service, representing 45% of total NHS referral activity from GP surgeries to specialist care.
Over 5.7m bookings have been made using Choose and Book. CfH says the overall bookings figure is greater than the number of total referrals, because patients have the opportunity to change, or re-arrange a booked appointment once the referral has been made.
CfH say that the use of Choose and Book in the NHS is steadily increasing, having previously taken two years to get to the first million referrals, but less than a year to add a further four million and reach the five million referrals milestone.
Claimed benefits of Choose and Book are said to include reductions in do not attends (DNAs) and waiting times. Doncaster & Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is, for instance, said to have seen their average DNA rate drop by 60%.
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