Rethink Referrals

During the last two decades, the number of medical referrals in the US has skyrocketed. The purpose of referrals is to ensure that the patients receive the right type of care from a specialist for a specific condition. Unfortunately, existing referral processes often slow a patient's ability to find the right care.

The referral process, heavily reliant on paperwork, phone calls, and faxes, can be incredible slow and painfully inefficient. Medical staff often struggle with authorization processes, insurance requirements, and scheduling constraints. These challenges can both slow and diminish the quality of patient care.

• Administrative Overload: Manual handling of referrals is time-consuming, pulling resources away from direct patient care.
• Communication Challenges: Miscommunication and delays between healthcare providers lead to inconsistent care that negatively impact patient care.
• Patient Discontent: Long wait times and scheduling delays leave patients dissatisfied with their healthcare experience.

Amid these challenges, automation can create an efficient, transparent, and patient-friendly referral process.

• Seamless Integration - Automated systems seamlessly integrate with Electronic Health Records (EHRs), facilitating real-time access to patient data and streamlining the referral process. From initiation to completion, information flows seamlessly between providers, reducing administrative burden and minimizing errors.
• Intelligent Routing - Analyze patient demographics, medical history, and provider specialties to intelligently route referrals, ensuring patients are matched with the best healthcare providers. This speeds up the process and also enhances the quality of care by connecting patients with specialists best equipped to address their needs.
• Enhanced Communication - Automation builds transparent and efficient communication channels between healthcare providers, enabling seamless collaboration and care coordination. Instant notifications, secure messaging platforms, and telehealth integrations facilitate swift exchange of information, eliminating delays and ensuring timely interventions.
• Organization – Reduce clinician burden in evaluating referral candidates by delivering consistently structured and labeled referral packets regardless of source.
• Patient Empowerment - Providing patients with self-referral options and online portals empowers them to take control of their own healthcare. When patients are placed at the center of the referral process it leads to increased engagement and satisfaction.

A broken referral process not only impacts the patient, but it also results in lost revenue for the healthcare provider. New patients lost through a poor referral process can reduce a health system’s annual revenue by as much as 20%. A missed appointment or referral no-show can cost a system an average of $200.?

Introducing automation can have an immediate positive impact on the patient’s experience and create a healthier bottom line for healthcare providers.

If you would like to learn about how Extract can assist in automating your existing referral process, please reach out today.

About the Author: Jim Feierstein

Jim Feierstein is a Business Development Manager with Extract Systems. He has over 20 years of experience working with document capture, routing, and storage technology solutions. For the last eight years he has been focused on helping healthcare organizations improve document workflows.