Right to Choose (ASD referrals)
What is Right to Choose (ASD)
If you are registered with a GP in England and they refer you to a consultant or specialist doctor, you have the legal right to choose your provider.
- Right to Choose (RTC) is not currently available in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. If you move and register with a GP outside England while waiting for an assessment, you will no longer be eligible for RTC.
- The organisation you choose must be a ‘qualified provider’. Psychiatry UK has NHS contracts with a number of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to provide diagnosis and treatment services for adult ADHD and autism. We therefore meet the RTC criteria.
- We cannot provide ASD assessments for patients under the age of 18 under RTC.
If your GP feels a referral is appropriate and makes a referral to us, we can arrange for your treatment to be paid for by the NHS under the Right to Choose legislation.
How to apply for Right to Choose (ASD)
1. Make an appointment with your GP
The first step is to discuss your symptoms with your GP.
If they agree that you may have ASD and that you need to be assessed, you have the legal right to choose an appropriate provider and can ask to be referred to Psychiatry UK under Right to Choose (RTC) legislation.
The referral should be sent to us directly by your GP (you cannot self-refer under RTC).
2. What to take to your appointment
It can be helpful to take a completed AQ10 form to help confirm whether your symptoms are consistent with a possible ASD diagnosis.
- Download and complete this AQ10 form
- Download and amend this letter
Fill in your details where indicated (this should include your email address and phone number) and address it to your GP.
3. How will I know if Psychiatry UK has received my referral?
It can take up to 4 weeks to process your referral. Once accepted, we will contact you via SMS and/or email with instructions to help you set up an account on our MedQare portal.
When you are logged in, you will find a welcome note letting you know what will happen next.
If you have not heard from us within 4 weeks, please ask your GP surgery:
- The date your GP sent your referral.
- Whether your referral has been returned to your surgery as incomplete, or has not been accepted.
If your referral has not been returned to your GP and you have not heard from us after 4 weeks, please contact our customer support team using our Virtual Assistant service. Our opening hours are Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm.
Are we the right provider for you?
Psychiatry UK is a fully online company, and our services may not be suitable for all patients.
Online vs. in-person – what’s the difference?
Whereas traditional in-person care is provided directly by a mental health specialist in a local clinic or surgery, an online (or ‘telepsychiatry’) service uses technology such as a computer, phone or tablet to deliver care remotely. This means that:
- We will communicate with you via our MedQare patient portal.
- Your assessment will take place via a secure Teams call with your doctor.
Frequently Asked Questions
We continue to experience unprecedented demand for referrals for both our Adult ADHD and autism services, which has inevitably created waiting lists.
Please click here for our current waiting times Our Customer Support team is unable to give any more information on waiting times over the phone or web chat; please wait to be contacted by us.
If you are already registered with us, we will contact you by email and portal note to arrange the appointment, so please keep looking out for Psychiatry UK emails and check your portal regularly for messages.
Under the present terms of our contracts we can only see adults under RTC. We do, of course, have child and adolescent specialists available on a private basis.
Children can very often be diagnosed through the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) via school referral.
To apply for ASD referral under Right to Choose, you must be referred by your GP.
Alternatively, you can pay for a private ASD assessment with us. Please visit our How it Works page for more information.
Assuming that your GP is refusing to refer you due to funding concerns and not a clinical reason, you can ask them to read the NHS information governing patient choice.
Common causes of confusion are the fact that we are not commissioned by your Integrated Care Board (ICB), which is not relevant, or that the GP is only aware of applying through an IFR (Individual Funding Request) and asking the ICB for permission first, which again, is not necessary.
If you have any further questions, please reach out to our customer support team via our Virtual Assistant.
Your GP does not need to get prior approval for your referral from the local Integrated Care Board (ICB) and we do not need to seek their approval before starting your treatment.
Once we receive the referral from your GP, we will contact you and ask you to complete some further questionnaires. We will then arrange an appointment for you to be assessed by one of our ASD specialist doctors.
A patient’s legal right to choose a provider covers all aspects of healthcare. However, you can only choose an eligible provider that has an NHS contract for the service you require. At present, Psychiatry UK is only commissioned for Adult ADHD and Adult Autism assessments.
We are planning to offer alternative treatments such as coaching and therapy in the future, but these are not currently available through Psychiatry UK.
If you move and register with a GP outside England while waiting for an assessment, you will no longer be eligible for RTC. You will need to be referred to a local ASD service, or you can pay for a private assessment.
Unfortunately, the Right to Choose rules cannot be used to swap provider mid-treatment. If you are unhappy with your existing care, you will need to reach a resolution with your current provider.
No. We can only invoice the ICB from the date of the referral.
You can seek a second opinion through Right to Choose, but we will require your GP to provide us with the previous report and related correspondence.
However, please note that if your assessment was performed by Psychiatry UK, we cannot offer you a second opinion under RTC through our service.