🎞️ Video: Creating referrals
You can create an outgoing (or external) referral to a provider outside of your clinic. From the patient chart, you can initiate a new referral from an encounter, a letter or a form, and the letter or form is attached to the referral to provide the required information about the patient and the reason for the referral.
You can also create an internal referral to a provider within your clinic (see Creating internal referrals).
Steps
1. Within a patient chart, do one of the following:
Create and save a new letter (see Creating letters from the patient chart or Creating letters from encounters).
💡 Tips:
Within an encounter, in the Referrals section, you can quickly create a referral letter that includes your encounter notes. Click Add Letter to be able to modify the contents of the letter, or click Add Referral to include your encounter notes without modifying.
When creating a letter, choose a referral letter template to quickly include all required information.Add and save a new form (see Adding forms to encounters).
2. After you save your referral letter or form, at the bottom, click Referral > External.
The New Referral - Outgoing window opens.
3. Fill in the fields of the referral.
Field | Description |
Reason for Referral | If you selected a presenting issue for the encounter or a letter title, it appears by default. Otherwise, Consultation appears by default. You can type a new reason, if required. |
Date Added | Defaults to today's date; change it, if required. |
Ordering Provider | Select who ordered the referral. |
Service Provider | Select who the patient will see. Defaults to the recipient of the referral letter.
💡 Tip: You can leave this field blank, and have your staff choose the appropriate provider based on the type of referral. |
Patient Information | Defaults to the current patient. |
Attachmments | The referral letter or form is automatically attached. To attach another document, such as a file from the patient chart, click Add Attachment and choose the document. |
Status | Choose the appropriate status. |
Priority | Choose the appropriate priority. |
Patient Data Referral Data | If customised in your referral settings, click a blue data field to update patient data and referral data directly from the referral. See Updating patient and referral data from a referral. |
Comments | If required, type additional comments and click Leave Comment. These comments remain in your clinic and are not sent externally. |
4. Click Save.
5. Choose one of the following send options:
Message: To send the referral as an internal message within your clinic, such as to staff so that they can choose the appropriate service provider.
Send Out: To print, fax, or email the referral to the service provider.
The referral is saved (and sent) and added to your list of Outgoing referrals list in the Referrals dashboard.
Updated August 11, 2021