AQW 47798/22-27

Miss Nuala McAllister
Alliance Party
North Belfast

Tabled Date: 03/06/2026
Answered On Date: 22/06/2026
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Health to detail any steps being taken to ensure that patient referral letters do not go missing from the encompass system.

Answer:

The Department is aware of an issue identified within encompass whereby referral rejection letters were not consistently generated and issued to GP practices following clinical triage decisions. Action has been taken to address this and to ensure that referral communications are reliably issued going forward.

The underlying system rule governing the automatic generation of referral rejection letters was corrected in April 2026. This change ensures that, where a referral is rejected at triage, a corresponding communication to the referring GP is now generated as intended.

Health and Social Care Trusts have completed a regional review of affected referrals to identify cases where rejection letters were not issued. Where necessary, these communications have been retrospectively completed, with particular focus on higher‑risk cases where further clinical action or clarification may have been required.

Further safeguards have been put in place to prevent recurrence and strengthen oversight. These include the standardisation of referral workflows across clinical and administrative teams, enhanced reporting to identify any rejected referrals without a corresponding communication, updated guidance and training for staff, and strengthened governance arrangements to monitor compliance.

There is no evidence of an ongoing systemic failure. The issue related to a specific configuration rule, which has now been corrected, with additional controls in place to provide assurance that referral outcomes are consistently communicated to GPs.