Across the health and wellbeing sector, consistency matters. When services collect different information, follow different referral processes or report outcomes in different ways, it becomes harder to understand what is working, compare impact across regions and scale successful approaches.
That’s why NHS Scotland has introduced the Once For Scotland approach for exercise referral services, this represents an important step forward.
What Is Once For Scotland?
Once For Scotland is a national approach to standardising services and data collection across Scotland’s healthcare system. The ambition is simple: To create greater consistency across Health Boards, improve the quality of data being collected and enable services to better evidence their impact. By aligning referral pathways, interventions and outcomes, organisations can move beyond isolated local approaches and help build a more connected national picture of preventative healthcare.
Why Does This Matter?
Exercise referral schemes play a vital role in supporting people to become more active, improve their health and manage long-term conditions. However, when services operate differently from one area to another, it can be difficult to compare outcomes, identify best practice and demonstrate the collective impact achieved across the country.
A standardised approach creates several important benefits:
- Greater consistency in service delivery
- Improved quality and comparability of data
- Easier onboarding for new schemes
- Better reporting and outcome measurement
- Stronger evidence for future investment and development
Ultimately, it allows services to move beyond local reporting and contribute towards a national understanding of how exercise referral is supporting healthier communities.
This thinking led to the creation and introduction of the Once for Scotland exercise referral scheme.
How ReferAll Supports the new scheme
A key feature of the new scheme is collecting the right data and producing a specific set of reports that can be collated at a national level to support the running and funding of the programme. ReferAll has developed a pre-configured scheme to do this easily, greatly reducing the time that delivery teams need to spend on producing reports, as well as ensuring the correct data is passed to the national reporting organisation.
This means that operators using the ReferAll system and scheme:
- Adopt a nationally aligned referral model
- Capture referrals, interventions and outcomes consistently
- Reduce implementation complexity
- Enhance reporting and benchmarking capabilities
- Scale more efficiently as programmes grow
This approach removes the need for organisations to build bespoke systems and processes, helping accelerate adoption while maintaining consistency.
Supporting Services Across Scotland
The Once For Scotland exercise referral solution is already supporting scheme providers across:
- Active Dundee
- Perth & Kinross
- Sport Aberdeen
And at the time of writing, several other organisations are in discussions to adopt the solution, offering the opportunity to continue to build a more connected and consistent approach to exercise referral across Scotland.
Looking Ahead
The future of preventative health and wellbeing relies on more than delivering services. It requires the ability to measure impact, share learning and build consistent approaches that can scale. The Once For Scotland programme represents an important step towards achieving that vision. By supporting this work ReferAll is equipping organisations to collect better data, evidence outcomes more effectively and contribute to a stronger, more connected preventative health system across Scotland.
As adoption grows, so too does the opportunity to demonstrate the collective impact that exercise referral services bring the health and wellbeing of communities nationwide.
"One of the biggest opportunities we have as a sector is to create greater consistency in how exercise referral services are delivered and evaluated. The Once For Scotland approach provides a framework to do exactly that, helping organisations align around a common model while building a stronger evidence base for the role physical activity plays in improving health outcomes. We're proud to be supporting that ambition and look forward to working with more organisations across Scotland as adoption continues to grow." Comments Stuart Stokes, Managing Director, ReferAll
Interested in learning more?
If you're exploring how your organisation can align with the Once For Scotland exercise referral scheme, or would like to understand how ReferAll can support the delivery and reporting of health and wellbeing services, 
to find out more.