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Information to support choice

  • Last modified date:
    16 July 2008

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NHS Choices

NHS Choices has been developed to help you make choices about your health, from lifestyle decisions about things like smoking, drinking and exercise, through to the practical aspects of finding and using NHS services when you need them.

Choose and Book website

Choose and Book is a national electronic referral service which gives patients a choice of place, date and time for their first outpatient appointment in a hospital or clinic. Patients can choose their hospital or clinic, and then book their appointment to see a specialist with a member of the practice team at the GP surgery, or at home by telephone or over the internet at a time more convenient to them.

This website is designed for both patients and NHS staff and provides information to help understand and use the system.

Electronic Prescription Service

The Electronic Prescription Service will enable prescribers - such as GPs and practice nurses - to send prescriptions electronically to a dispenser (such as a pharmacy) of the patient’s choice. This will make the prescribing and dispensing process safer and more convenient for patients and staff.

Primary care

Primary care is the term for the health services that play a central role; GPs, pharmacists, dentists and midwives.  Every citizen should have the best possible access to these services.

Treating more patients and extending choice overseas for NHS patients: the difference between requests to go abroad, commissioning services abroad and choice (in England)

This guidance is about handling requests from individual patients to go to other European countries for treatment. It does not affect other commissioning activities, such as: 

  • contractual arrangements that commissioners may have made with healthcare providers overseas (for example for treatment for rare conditions, or because of capacity constraints in the NHS). Suggested guidelines to facilitate this process have been produced in discussions between the EU Member States and the European Commission
  • arrangements in England for patient choice at the point of referral, since all healthcare providers under the choice system fall under regulatory requirements of the NHS.

Achieving shorter waits

Progress, plans and future targets for reducing waiting times for all NHS patients.

Increased capacity

Progress, plans and future targets for increasing the number of nurses, doctors, clinics, hospitals and hospital beds.

Case studies

Examples of innovation and good practice taking place in NHS organisations around Waiting, booking and choice reform.

Directed Enhanced Service for Choice and Booking

This letter gave GPs an update on the development of a measurement of the choice component of the DES.

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