Further information for CUES practices can be found here

General Information on Referrals

Please ensure that when you are on the red referral tab, the correct urgency and clinic are chosen:

Speciality – ophthalmology/emergency eye services

Priority – emergency/urgent/routine

Clinic type – cataract/glaucoma

Currently, if you select urgent referral, when on the red referral tab, it may default to Provider – ‘Emergency eyecare services’ and then ‘Emergency’ in the middle (priority) tab. If it is not a same day referral, please change this to Speciality– Ophthalmology, Provider – Urgent.

Referrals for CUES go via the Opera system to the chosen hospital.

For all same day referrals sent to BMEC and Wolverhampton New Cross please print and give the patient a copy to be on the safe side and state on the referral that this is a same day referral. Further information on same day referrals can be found here

For urgent referrals it is good practice to ask the patient to contact your practice if they haven’t heard in the expected time frame and document this on your record. If a patient contacts you then you should endeavour to chase the referral with the hospital. When chasing referrals, please do not mention Opera as referrals are emailed (from ‘’Optometry referrals’ as a pdf document) to the appropriate hospital referral inbox, and most hospital staff will not know what Opera is.

For details on referrals to the GP from CUES, please see the link below

https://help.optom-referrals.org/article/495-referring-to-a-gp

A report for all completed CUES episodes is automatically sent to the patient’s GP.

Chasing Referrals

Opera is a web based platform used by optical practices and specific hospitals (who run the post-op cataract and some glaucoma services).

When chasing referrals with hospitals, please DO NOT mention Opera. This is because Opera generates a pdf report and emails this (from ‘’Optometry referrals’) to the appropriate hospital referral inbox, and most hospital staff will not know what Opera is and may dismiss the enquiry. On the referral status section of the episode, it will say “referred via nhs.net” or “sent to eRS provider”.

For the contact details for the hospitals for urgent referrals follow the links here

For the contact details for the hospitals for an emergency referral follow the links here

If you need to check on the situation with a non-urgent referral made to the hospital via Opera you can contact the hospitals on the following phone numbers: