Project #191:
Neurosurgery Referrals during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Can we determine how referrals to secondary specialties, such as neurosurgery, changed during the pandemic? An exploratory study.

Access to healthcare depends on effective referrals to specialists in hospital. This includes ensuring, as best as possible, that people do not miss out on a referral when it is needed, but also that they are not referred unnecessarily. Patterns of referral can vary over time and between settings, making it important to describe and understand these changes in order to assess how they affect patients and inform service planning. In this study, we will use the example of referrals to neurosurgery. This is in order to keep the study focused, and because the lead applicant has expertise in this area, as a neurosurgeon.

Referral data in OpenSAFELY has not yet been widely used. It must therefore be thoroughly explored and described, so that we can be confident that the data is usable, and we can determine good ways of identifying referrals, as well as any issues that users need to be aware of.

This study will therefore analyse data from OpenSAFELY to describe the available referral data and identify good practice in using this data.