Enhance Your Care Coordination With Referral Management

A referral management system enables healthcare providers to make, manage, and track patient referrals.
It also provides visibility of referral partners, which can help reduce referral leakage.
A good referral manager facilitates information sharing between primary care providers and specialists, helping them close the loop and prevent incomplete referrals.
ChartRequest’s referral management software provides secure, streamlined workflows that promote communication and collaboration. This improves care coordination and enhances the patient experience.

What Is a Patient Referral Management System?

A patient referral management system is a tool or application that allows healthcare professionals to make, manage, and track patient referrals. Its main purpose is to facilitate and streamline communication among all the different healthcare providers a patient sees as a part of their treatment.ChartRequest. From our AES multilayered encryption to our HIPAA-compliant workflows, you’ll help your organization safeguard protected health information (PHI).

The Importance of a Good Referral Manager

For patients, being referred to a specialist is an important step in their healthcare journey. It indicates that the primary care physician doesn’t have the resources to treat their illness, injury, or condition. Because this frequently has an emotional impact, patients understandably want the best treatment as soon as possible.

For primary care physicians, referrals ensure a patient gets the specialized help they need. A PCP is responsible for making sure the specialist they’re referring a patient to provides the necessary services to diagnose and treat the patient’s condition.

Traditionally, managing referrals has been a task that front-desk staff — or, in larger organizations, referral coordinators — performed manually. However, they often have to deal with demanding time constraints, as well as a range of different health information management systems. These challenges can cause a lack of information sharing between primary care providers and specialists.

Consequently, specialists aren’t always provided with the reason for a referral or sufficient information regarding what type of diagnostics have been performed, as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality reports. At the same time, primary care physicians don’t always receive feedback from specialists regarding the care provided as a result of the referral visit.

In fact, experts estimate that 50 percent of patient referrals remain incomplete each year. Incomplete referrals can lead to diagnostic error — which can lead to severe harm to patients and result in costly lawsuits for healthcare providers.

Referral management solutions that streamline the referral process and ensure smooth communication between healthcare providers can improve this situation.

A 2018 study assessed the impact of a referral management solution on the referral management process of a group of primary care practices. The results were telling: 76.8 percent of the 1,341 referrals initiated during the study were actually completed. Moreover, healthcare staff found that when using the solution, the steps of the referral process were easier to complete.

Another issue related to poor referral management is referral leakage — or the loss of a referral because the patient sees a specialist outside of a hospital’s network. A robust referral management tool can provide primary care physicians and other referring providers with visibility of the specialists in their network so they can refer patients accordingly.

It’s evident that with a good referral manager that offers robust data sharing and communication tools, it becomes easier to provide quality healthcare throughout the care continuum. And that in turn contributes to an improved patient experience.

Referral Management Software From ChartRequest

At ChartRequest, it’s our business to facilitate HIPAA-compliant health information exchange as a part of our medical records services. In response to popular demand, we’ve now expanded our solutions to include the referral management process.

We asked our clients for input on what their needs were in regard to the referral process. Using this data, we designed a robust referral management application that streamlines the workflow and facilitates continuity of care

Our referral management software provides the following key features:

Fully HIPAA-compliant with 256-bit SSL encryption, 2048-bit private keys, and AES multilayered encryption
Intuitive, user-friendly interface
“Favorites” feature to add in-network and often-referred-to referral partners
Streamlined workflows that require no training to implement
Safe and secure medical, imaging, and billing file transfer
Direct messaging capability
Fax alerts for new referrals
Real-time email and text status updates
Prompts to close the loop by reciprocating information
Audit log to track by whom and when data has been viewed
Easy-to-understand help documentation

When combined with our medical record fulfillment software, it’s a powerful all-in-one solution for release of information and referral management.

Our referral management system offers many benefits:

It provides a fully automated, streamlined process with clear workflows. The application leads the user through a series of easy-to-complete steps. In addition to inputting general information, medical, imaging, and billing files can be exchanged for more context. This reduces the amount of work and phone calls involved in manual referral management, makes it easier to close the loop, and results in fewer incomplete referrals.
Each workflow is specifically designed to promote clear communication between healthcare providers.The dashboard shows the status of every referral at a glance. Users are notified of any changes by email or text message. In addition, at every step, referral partners can direct message each other for more information.
Users can favorite specific providers. Primary care physicians can categorize specialists who are in the same network or to whom they often send referrals as “favorites.” Specialists can do the same for referral sources who frequently send patients to them. This helps foster relationships, which in turn promotes better communication and collaboration.
The HIPAA-compliant software protects patients’ individually identifiable data at every step during the process. All information shared is safeguarded by our top-of-the-line security measures to ensure patients’ PHI is treated with the utmost confidentiality.
The audit log provides complete visibility of the referral process. From receiving a referral to scheduling appointments to close the loop, the log tracks every action taken and records who took the action. As a result, it’s easier for both referring providers and specialists to monitor the progress of a referral and pinpoint any bottlenecks. In the long run, this facilitates improved patient care.

ChartRequest Referral Management Pricing

Find the right Enterprise Subscription for your organization.

Transitioning to ChartRequest’s referral management is quick and easy:

Provide us with a list of your most referred-to providers or the providers from whom you regularly receive referrals. We’ll build your “Favorites” list for you so it’s easy for your staff to use out of the gate.
Provide us with a list of providers from whom you’d like to receive more referrals. Our Client Services team will perform outreach to ensure those organizations are aware of how you can make the referral process easier for them.
We’ll leverage a dual fax and product process so we can help your referral network ease the transition away from the fax machine. Our “Fax Nudge” feature and Workflow Toolkit will make it simple for your network to start using ChartRequest.

To find out how your organization can benefit from the ChartRequest Referral Management tool, fill out the form and schedule a demo today!

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