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How does referral management work?
In this article we are going to discuss about how referral management work

What are the benefits of referral management for healthcare organizations?

In many businesses, electronic medical records (EMRs) are insufficient for organising and monitoring referrals. Management of patient referrals is essential when health systems:

Are coordinating care between employed and independent practitioners with referral sources using various EMRs

Do you oversee a value-based plan or plans?

are trying to make it easier for patients to seek care and make appointments when necessary. are creating and managing an effective network of specialists.


By adopting a proactive stance in the referral management process, health systems may decrease patient leakage, improve care coordination, and connect patients with the care they need. Reference management software also gives health systems information into referral trends, enabling them to optimise provider networks for greater patient access, resulting in decreased patient wait times, improved network usage, happier patients, and overall better patient care.


What are the obstacles to effective referral management?

First and foremost, accurate provider directories

A relevant provider directory that is accurate has long been a problem for the healthcare industry. Although that in itself is an issue that many companies encounter as they battle to handle many sources of contradicting information, it's not as straightforward as the veracity of a provider's name and location.

In order to maintain accurate data, a provider database must specify which offices a provider practises in, what insurance plans the provider accepts at which offices, whether the provider is accepting new patients, and other information. We place a high priority on provider data integrity since we are aware that having an accurate, current provider directory is one of the fundamentals of successful referral management. The patient referral tool from par8o approaches this challenge from various angles.

Second Obstacle: Care Coordination Between Doctor's Offices

Care coordination is difficult when numerous offices each utilise a separate EMR. One benefit of using an EMR-independent referral management solution is that data can be shared between locations, enabling staff to exchange documents, patient notes, or basic information like updated phone numbers or patient appointment preferences in a HIPAA-compliant manner without depending on fax machines or calling the location, waiting on hold, and leaving a voicemail.

Employees of primary care offices, specialty offices, inpatient or emergency room discharge staff, and contact centre staff can now concentrate on patients in the clinic and/or finish tasks linked to referrals more rapidly thanks to this modification.

Scheduling Appointments & Closing the 'Clinical Loop' is the third hurdle.

Making the referral procedure as easy as feasible can increase the likelihood that patients will show up for their appointment if they can schedule it before leaving the office of the referring doctor. Because so many providers use different scheduling software, referral management process systems must be able to communicate with a variety of scheduling systems to be able to provide available appointments when issuing a referral.

Paro encourages receiving clinics to provide appointment attendance data and attach encounter notes to referrals utilising patient engagement strategies like text messaging in order to close the loop between referring and receiving clinicians.

Healthcare management teams can view and analyse real-time, actionable data about their patient traffic and network offices after a referral is made thanks to monitoring and reporting on each of these steps, from the time the referral is created to the time it is received and taken care of to the time it is scheduled.