Making a colposcopy referral

If a person needs to attend colposcopy, we will recommend the colposcopy service that you should refer them to.

We will recommend the service:

nearest to your clinic or practice
where they will receive the quickest available appointment

There are 15 colposcopy clinics in Ireland that CervicalCheck use. All are in hospital out-patient departments.

If you want to change the colposcopy service you refer them to, you can complete the Colposcopy Referral Form and send it to the chosen clinic.

If you are referring the person to a private colposcopy service, please be aware that this is not managed by CervicalCheck and we will not have visibility of the referral.

Referral to colposcopy

When referring a person to colposcopy, you should:

explain why they need to attend colposcopy
complete and post the colposcopy referral form (PDF, 1 page, 308KB) to the chosen service
document clinical findings
include the cytology report if the referral follows an abnormal cytology result

Nearest service

We will assign your practice or clinic to one of the 15 colposcopy services we use based on:

waiting times at colposcopy clinics
geographical proximity to your service
your history of referring patients to a particular service

We will also assign you to a secondary colposcopy service. This is in case your primary colposcopy service has difficulties providing appointments.

Next available appointment

We track waiting times at all colposcopy services we use.

If there are delays in one service, we will redirect appointments to another service. This will be until waiting times fall to within the target we set.

We will only recommend a service that meets waiting time standards.

Referral to colposcopy is a key part of the quality assurance of the screening programme.

For more information on this see our Guidelines for Quality Assurance in Cervical Screening.