Referral intake and review

A referral starts with a patient, a referring provider, a specialty and a receipt date. The Clinician submits these details for a selected patient after checking current privilege and care team assignment. The Referral Coordinator organizes the resulting review handoff. Priority distinguishes Routine from Urgent work. The case begins Received; the status should describe the actual handoff, rather than the age of a record or an email sitting elsewhere.

The referral record is deliberately compact. It keeps the source and specialty visible without turning an incoming request into an encounter. A patient may have more than one referral; each referral retains its own status and follow-up history. The referring provider is recorded as text, so agree on a consistent spelling convention before importing requests from several sources.

• Capture. The Clinician selects the patient and submits the referring provider, specialty, receipt date and priority after checking their privilege and patient assignment.
• Review. The Referral Reviewer works the received queue, checks the patient context and decides whether the request advances or is declined.
• Progress. The team updates the referral as care is scheduled and seen, then closes the case after reviewing the follow-up outcome.

Choose which Clinicians submit incoming requests, who reviews them and how urgent work reaches that reviewer. Agree on the specialty names people will use in the record. Define when a declined request needs follow-up with the source and when a seen visit is ready for closure. Keep these decisions aligned with the patient’s care team assignment and the clinician’s current privilege record.

If requests arrive through another system, decide who owns the transfer and how duplicates will be checked. The app records the referring provider and receipt date; the connection that carries an outside request needs its own setup. Practice with an ordinary and an urgent request before asking the team to use the board as its daily queue.

Suppose a patient is referred for a specialty visit on Monday. The Clinician submits the referral as Received and marks it Urgent; the coordinator prepares the reviewer handoff. The reviewer opens the waiting list, checks the patient and specialty, then moves the referral to Reviewed when the request is accepted. If the request cannot progress, the reviewer selects Declined. The coordinator can later mark an accepted case Scheduled, while the linked patient remains the same.

At handoff, ask the next person to identify the referring provider, current status and any linked follow-up. That short check prevents a scheduled appointment from being mistaken for a completed specialty visit. Review a second case for the same patient to confirm that each request keeps its own lifecycle.

• Referrals Awaiting Review — Incoming cases waiting for a referral decision, with patient, specialty and priority visible.
• Referral Lifecycle Board — Received cases shown for intake review.

Follow referral receipt to closure and plan the first operating cycle.