Following on from last week’s discussion on referrals it became clear that there are sometimes issues with locums sending eReferrals. I contacted Healthlink about this and it appears that the following is the situation. Each practice has a Healthlink security cert and the doctors in the practice are included under that cert. If a doctor is not registered under that cert for that practice, then eReferrals will be rejected. To get around this Locums should register with Healthlink. Its quiet straight forward, there is an application form on the Healthlink website. https://www.healthlink.ie/ApplyTo/applicationform.asp The following information is required. The practice name, a contact mobile phone number ideally the practice managers. Doctors name, IMC number. There is an option to say the doctor is a locum. I specifically asked what should a locum who is likely to work in several practices do. The answer was that in order to successfully send eReferrals the locum should register with Healthlink that he is in the practice even if this means registering in multiple practices. When he sends an eReferral the process will automatically know from which practice the referral was made. Similarly, if a locum orders bloods through Healthlink the lab will know which practice the order came from. Bloods ordered using paper forms will be dependent on the lab, so it is recommended not to put the locum’s name on paper blood requests. The other option, and Healthlink themselves suggested this, the locum can pick from the drop-down list, when making an eReferral, one of the other doctors in the practice. Michael Click here for Socrates in Centric World<https://centrichealthire.sharepoint.com/sites/CentricConnect/SitePages/Socrates.aspx>