Dear Patient

ADULT ADHD REFERRAL PROCESS

Thank you for your interest in a referral for an adult ADHD assessment. Please read the following process carefully.

NHS Referrals

Referrals to the local NHS Cornwall ADHD clinic are made by your GP.  We will send you a screening questionnaire and arrange an appointment with a GP to discuss your symptoms.  There is a long wait across the country for NHS ADHD assessments. Once you have been assessed, if a diagnosis is made and there is a plan to start medication we will consider entering into a shared care prescribing agreement with the Cornwall ADHD service. This means we can help with the ongoing monitoring and prescriptions after they have been started by the ADHD clinic.

 Right to Choose pathway

If you prefer not to wait for the NHS Cornwall ADHD clinic, you have the option of going through the Right to Choose pathway which means you can choose to be referred to a private provider and this will be funded by the NHS.

 All Right to Choose providers are classed as private providers. They are mostly not local and so assessments are likely to be online. You will need to choose one of these private Right to Choose providers and details can be found here:

ADHD UK: Right to Choose

 We cannot choose a private provider for you - you must do this yourself. Each provider has different criteria and different paperwork and you will need to ensure you meet their criteria and complete and send any required paperwork to us prior to your GP appointment.

Not all Right to Choose providers can prescribe medication. If you are seeking medication please ensure you choose an appropriate provider.

If a Right to Choose provider makes a diagnosis of ADHD and recommends medication we will NOT be able to take on a shared care agreement with them which means we will not be able to prescribe this medication or continue the monitoring including ECGs, blood tests. This is because these medications require specialist oversight, which we cannot guarantee is safely happening with all private providers.

If you will be unable to self-fund medication for ADHD, a Right to Choose referral is not for you and we would encourage you to seek referral to the NHS service.

Please be aware, you are only able to be added to one waiting list – so you can’t be referred to Right to Choose and the local NHS service together.

 To proceed with a referral

To proceed with your ADHD referral, please complete the following documentation and return all of these to us:

• 1. A completed SCREENING QUESTIONNAIRE
• 2. A handwritten or typed statement with your symptoms, concerns and impact upon daily living including home, work and relationships; also include what you have tried to do to help with these symptoms and what you expect from diagnosis; please make this as detailed as possible as it will aid in your referral
• 3. Details of your selected Right to Choose provider if this is your preferred referral route and a completed referral proforma downloaded from your chosen provider’s website (please note that your GP will not be able to fill this out for you)

 We can only accept your request for a referral for assessment once all of the above pieces of documentation have been received.

 Please note that if we need to send you reminders for any outstanding information or documents, we will hold your referral for you for a period of 21 days, to allow you time to provide the required information. If you still do not respond to our reminders, we will assume you do not wish to be referred and we will close your request. Doing this allows our admin staff the time to help other patients.

 If you are interested in an ADHD/Autism/ASD assessment for a child, please click the link below. Parents should contact their child's school in the first instance, as school can make referrals to the local mental health service. Comments that GPs must make such referrals are factually incorrect.

CAMHS ADHD Service | Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

 Making a referral

Once we have your screening questionnaire, written information and any relevant Right to Choose paperwork, an appointment will be made for you to see the doctor to consider if referral is the right next step. If referral is agreed, the admin team will make the referral to your chosen provider, sending off all the required documents. After this, your chosen provider will be in touch.

Once your referral has been sent to your provider, the surgery will no longer be involved in the process and all queries will need to be directed to your provider.

Many thanks

Yours sincerely

Newquay Health Centre

(With thanks for Ivygrove Surgery for use of some of their policy above)

Adult ADHD advice 

We want to ensure all our patients are safely assessed and treated. Due to long waiting times in the NHS, patients seeking possible diagnosis of adult ADHD look at quicker ways to be seen, such as private clinics. These private clinics can be very expensive to patients, with ongoing unexpected costs of prescriptions and regular monitoring that are not made clear. Some clinics also have variable standards of care.   If you are seen privately & advised to have medication, GPs cannot prescribe these specialist ADHD medications or take over their specialist monitoring, which are at least annual once stabilised. Please be aware of these hidden costs to patients of private ADHD clinic treatment. 

If you are seen in an NHS ADHD clinic, the ongoing monitoring and prescribing is paid for by the NHS. Sometimes a legal "shared care agreement" is set up with the NHS ADHD clinic and GPs where we assist with prescribing, providing the specialist is overseeing regular patient monitoring & reviews. 

There are also "Right to Choose" or ICB commissioned ADHD services (often online) that can diagnose ADHD & can sometimes set up shared care arrangements with GPs. These have been approved by the NHS to offer a good standard of care. However, please be aware that we do not engage in shared care agreements for any Right to Choose providers. Patients opting for the Right to Choose pathway will need to fund their prescriptions themselves.

Child ADHD Advice:

The referral process for children with suspected ADHD/Autism has changed. Patients are required to have ‘Neurodiverse Profiling’ which takes about 45-90 minutes to complete by a trained professional in partnership with parents/carers, and young person (if appropriate). This is not expected to be completed by the GP. To arrange Neurodiverse profiling, families should:

• -Speak to their school or healthcare professional trained in the profiling tool.
• -Alternatively, they can email cft.ndcornwall@nhs.net to identify someone who can help if the child/young person is not currently under a healthcare or school professional trained in the profiling tool.

The following website may also be helpful:    https://parentcarerscornwall.org.uk/neuodiversity/