Referrals
We support any adult (18+) in the Dorothy House area with a progressive, treatable but not curable life-limiting illness or with severe frailty, and also their family (including children) and carers.
An individual journey of care
Approaching the end of life
If you, or someone you love, is approaching the final years of life, we offer our community:
- Access to our 24 hour Advice Line
- Access to free symptom control guidance and information via our website and/or printed literature
- Community support groups
- Financial and benefits advice
- End of life planning
Reasons for referral
The majority of support provided by Dorothy House is in the community, within patients’ homes, care homes or community hospitals. Not everyone who is coming to the end of their life will need specialist hospice support. Some of the key reasons you may consider a referral to Dorothy House are:
- Complex, distressing or rapidly deteriorating symptoms that cannot be readily managed by existing care team (e.g. District Nurses, GPs, care home staff)
- Complex psychological, emotional, social or spiritual distress relating to illness, or concerns over death
- Specialist care at the very end of life, including bereavement needs of loved ones
- Bereavement support from a recent death, when additional specialist support is needed
Specialist care
If you, or someone you love, needs access to specialist palliative and end of life care, we offer support via our
- Community palliative care teams: locally focussed, nurse-led teams in the community
- Medical service: specialist palliative doctors
- Day services: nurse-led services, clinics and a range of informal wellbeing, relaxation, exercise and social groups
- Hospice at Home: healthcare assistants providing end of life care in the community
- Inpatient Unit at Winsley
- Family support including social work, children and young people’s services, bereavement services and spiritual support
- Therapy services
- Companions service
Bereavement support
If one of your loved ones has died, and you need some extra support, depending on personal circumstances we offer:
- Community support groups open to anyone going through a bereavement
- Dorothy House led community groups requiring a referral
- One to one psychological support: if your loved one has died under Dorothy House care, and you need some specialist help.
Referral methods
Non-Palliative Lymphoedema referral
The following information is for non-palliative Lymphoedema patients. If you require Lymphoedema services for a patient who is palliative, they should be referred direct to Dorothy House by using the referral process outlined above.
Non-palliative Lymphoedema referrals can be made by GPs or Allied Health Care Professionals, in consultation with the patient’s GP. All patients must be in agreement with the referral and self-referrals are not accepted for this service.
Make a referral:
Referrals will be accepted only following completion of the correct referral form along with a recent patient medical summary and any appropriate recent letters, scans and blood test results. Any incomplete referral forms will be returned for further information and no action will be taken by the Lymphoedema Service until this is satisfactorily completed.
For patients registered with a Wiltshire CCG GP:
Dorothy House no longer offers this service. The provider is:
Wiltshire Health and Care
Tissue Viability and Lymphoedema Service
To refer, email: whc.lymphoedema@nhs.net
For patients registered with a Somerset CCG GP (East & Central Mendip only):
GPs who have a non-palliative patient in the East and Central Mendip area, please download the referral form below for the acceptance criteria.
Links & Downloads
Sharing consent
If a patient decides to take up any offer of our support, for administrative and professional practice purposes, we need to record and store a certain amount of personal information about them on this database. This will include their name, address, date of birth, GP and consultations with professionals. We’re a multi-disciplinary team so all staff involved in their care need to have access to their records in order to provide coordinated and appropriate care and support.
If a patient is receiving support from us and if any of their healthcare professionals (ie a district nurse, GP surgery, or other health and social care staff) also use SystmOne as their clinical database system, we encourage full sharing of clinical information.
Sharing benefits
A patient’s records can be shared safely and efficiently between the different organisations when consent has been given to use SystmOne.
Sharing your patient record enables:
- Prompt access to relevant information leading to fewer delays in the provision of care
- Information to be up-to-date and consistent
- Improved communication between the healthcare professionals involved in providing care
- Greater accuracy with a reduced risk of critical information, such as allergies, being missed
- More efficient use of clinical and administrative time with less duplication
Depending on what a patient has agreed, there are two ways in which their information can be shared:
Sharing IN = This controls whether information made shareable can be viewed by Dorothy House/RUH SPCT
Sharing OUT = This controls whether information recorded by Dorothy House/RUH SPCT can be shared with other services using SystmOne
It is your decision as to who can see what information.