ABSTRACT
The most frequently asked question of all relates to referrals, or rather the impact that introducing patient self-referral will have on the viability of a service. In the recently reported national trial of patient self-referral to physiotherapy, less than 20% of sites experienced any increase in the overall number of referrals to their service above that found nationally. Those that did had one thing in common, a history of under-provision. One of the frequently asked questions is: Is there any way a therapist can anticipate the impact of introducing patient self-referral on the number of referrals to his/her service? A much more accurate way of monitoring the referral rate is to express the number of referrals a service receives annually as a proportion of the population it serves. The authors have also developed a ‘tool’ which will take the reader to calculate the therapists's referral rate as a proportion per thousand.
