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Local Referral Unit (East Kent)

We are a trained team to deliver excellent patient services dealing with contacts across the whole of east Kent. All urgent calls and emails are handed over to the designated teams.

Contact us

Ashford patient line: 0300 123 0915

Canterbury patient line: 0300 123 4415

SKC patient line: 0300 123 1943

Thanet patient line: 0300 790 0386

Opening hours: 8am to 10pm, 7 days-a-week, outside of these hours please dial 111.

Who we are

Outstanding Selfies Deal Local Referral UnitWe are a trained team to deliver excellent patient services dealing with contacts across the whole of east Kent. All urgent calls and emails are handed over to the designated teams.

Every team member works to a set standard and this includes quality of calls, productivity measures and opportunities to improve patient experience. All our calls are recorded for training and monitoring purposes.

What we do

The referral unit receive calls and emails from multiple agencies including acute hospitals, GPs, care homes, hospices and 111 and from our service users, patients, carers and relatives. These are then logged on to our patient system RIO and referred to the relevant teams and services.

The incoming referrals are worked on by order of their priority with the focus being patient engagement, accuracy and response time to maximise our patient experience. The referrals range from routine blood tests to be seen in weeks through to palliative care patients who need to be seen immediately.

There is also clinical support within the LRU provided by a small triage team.