Right to Choose Autism/ ADHD Assessments

If you are based in England under the NHS you now have a legal right to choose your mental healthcare provider and your choice of mental healthcare team. This service is offered through the NHS and is free.

Who can offer Right to Choose assessments?

There are a number of clinics throughout the UK that can offer Right to Choose ADHD and/or ASD assessments. To become a Right to Choose clinic provider, the clinic must supply the same service to the NHS somewhere in England, they cannot be a private only clinic.

The provider’s website is usually a good place to start to find out if they offer the service you need.

The list or providers is constantly changing, for more information on ADHD & Right to Choose referrals, the ADHD UK website has some useful information.
Right to Choose - ADHD UK

Things to consider about Right to Choose

It is important to note that many of the clinic providers can offer diagnosis but are rarely able to offer medication titration.

This means that you may be able to obtain a diagnosis with the named clinics, but often you will need a local NHS referral should they find that you need to start medication to control your symptoms.

When can you not use Right to Choose?

There are some restrictions on which patients are eligible for a Right to Choose assessment and the below is a list of the reasons you would not be eligible:

• You need urgent or emergency treatment – this is often not relevant as there are rarely times when this type of referral is considered urgent but is still worth noting here.

• You already receive care and treatment for the condition you are seeking an assessment for.

• The organisation or clinical team you’ve chosen does not provide the right care for your condition.

• You are a prisoner or on temporary release from prison.

• You are detained in prescribed accommodation such as a court, secure training centre, immigration removal centre or young offender’s institute.

• You are detained in a secure hospital setting.

• You are detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended in 2007.)

• You are a serving member of the armed forces

Process for requesting a Right to Choose referral from your GP

For all Right to Choose referrals, the patient, or their family if a child, will need to research and select a clinic themselves, it is not something the GP can advise on. Once you have chosen which clinic you would like to have your assessment with please provide us with the Company name and contact details (email address that the referral needs to be sent to). This will enable us to process the referral letter efficiently.

It is our surgery’s policy that we are able to send a brief referral letter and patient summary to those providers willing to accept referrals via this route. Due to the multitude of different proformas in use by different providers, and current clinical pressures, we are not able to fill in provider-specific proformas.