Guidance before making referrals

What we do

We’re a specialist lower limb wound and lymphoedema service that does not have an in-house pharmacy.

Medical history

Please include the full medical history where possible to enable a full assessment to be completed.

Housebound patients

All housebound patients will need to be known to Adult Community nursing services and wherever possible will be visited with the district nurse responsible for that patient’s care.

Discharge criteria

• Patients who self-manage their lymphoedema and obtain repeat compression garment prescriptions from their GP.
• Patients whose needs are being met by their primary and/or social care providers.
• When there is no further scope for making an impact on a patient’s need.
• When a patient chooses not to attend Lymphoedema Clinic appointments or consistently fails to work within an agreed treatment plan.

Aftercare

Once patients are stable in a maintenance regime they will be discharged back to the primary carer for long term maintenance. This will usually involve repeat emollients and a 6 month hosiery review. The patient can self-refer in the initial 6-12 month period following discharge if there are any difficulties. If the patient requires service access 12 months or longer following discharge, a full referral is required to include an update of the patient’s medical history to enable a contemporary and comprehensive assessment based upon the recent history.

Additional prescribing information for GPs and District Nurses

There are many compression products that are now on the market available on FP10. Unfortunately EMIS does not allow for the pip code use only for made to measure products. We rely predominantly on the most accurate descriptors for these products.

Please call 020 3819 6022 if there is any difficulty finding the items requested, or if you have any other queries.