Patients

All appointments are made by your GP or another referring Hospital.

The Hospital's policy is to contact patients with an appointment within 10 working days of receipt of referral request.

If you have any queries in connection with your appointment please contact the appropriateor the appointments department at (01) 410 3434 / 410 3433.

Patients who cancel their outpatient appointment will be given the next available date at the time of cancellation. 

If a patient cancels on more than two occasions, they will be discharged from the outpatient waiting list.  Only the consultant, upon review of the patients medical chart can authorise reversal of this discharge.

In order to provide safe care to all patients attending our outpatient services, it is essential that we ensure compliance with national guidelines and as such you are kindly asked to:

Be on time

• Only attend your appointment at the time indicated on your appointment letter.

Not early or late

• Please do not arrive early or late for your appointment, doing so may result in you missing your allotted appointment slot.

Attend alone where possible

• Where possible, you should attend your appointment unaccompanied. If you have a special requirement for assistance, please contact us in advance to discuss.

COVID 19 - Attending for a outpatient appointment

The Admissions Department coordinates the hospital’s total bed management and discharge function in accordance with hospital policy. This includes ensuring appropriate and fair access to beds for all acute and non-acute patients, that is scheduled and unscheduled care.

Scheduled Care
Scheduled care refers to patients who are booked electively to attend for a surgical procedure or a planned admission.

Unscheduled Care
Unscheduled care refers to patients who need to be admitted to the hospital in an unplanned manner, for example, attendances via the Emergency Department, admission from the Outpatient Clinic or inter-hospital transfers.

How to access the service
Patients due for scheduled care will be placed on a waiting list by the relevant team. Once there is a provisional date for admission available, the patient will be contacted by the Admissions Department.

Patients requiring an unscheduled admission will be processed via the medical team who liaise with the Admissions Department to secure a bed for the patient in a timely manner.

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As part of St James’s commitment to quality and the Patient's Charter, we continue to strive for improvement in the quality of communication systems and response times in dispatching outpatient appointments. To assist the Hospital in achieving these aims we are moving towards acceptance of electronic referrals via Healthlink for most of our specialties.   In the short term we will be accepting referrals via the traditional routes (ie letters) alongside the electronic referrals.  This will be phased out and we will move towards acceptance of only electronic referrals.  Information in connection with the National Ereferral project can be obtained at the following webpage www.ehealthireland.ie/eReferral  Please see Consultants A-Z for the referall pathway for each consultant. 

To help us deal with your referral, please ensure your referral rquest includes the following:

• Hospital & Specialty Required
• Clinical Priority
• Date of Referral
• Full GP & practice details or External Consultant name & External Agency
• Complete patient demographic data including correct name spelling, address, gender and date of birth
• Patient's contact telephone numbers etc (these are important in instances when we may be able to offer a patient an earlier or cancelled appointment)
• Reason for Referral / Anticipated Outcome.
• All relevant clinical information

Some referrals require a specific specialty form, please see the specific service for more information.

Clinical Audit Patient Information Leaflet