The referral problem
Communication gaps, insufficient information and misdirected referrals. Three causes, one outcome.
From the analysis
Providers take different approaches to recommending specialists
There is no shared basis for who gets sent where, so the same finding produces different destinations depending on who is looking at it.
Too much responsibility rests with the patient
The patient is handed a piece of paper and made responsible for a process they have no visibility into.
Providers still use low-tech, inefficient processes
More than half send referrals by traditional fax, 40 per cent hand paper to the patient, and 10 per cent give verbal instructions.
Including by providers who have digital tools
More than half of providers still send referrals this way.
The patient becomes the courier and the chaser.
Digital, and still subject to the same receiving-end limits.
No record on either side that it happened.
The uncomfortable finding
Providers who rely on their electronic health records — the 50 per cent who send e-faxes and the 30 per cent who use EHR referral orders — can contribute to the same inefficiency. If the receiving end cannot keep up with the volume, digitally referred patients experience gaps in their care just as reliably as patients referred on paper.
The lesson is that transmission is not the bottleneck. Capacity and follow-up are.
Beyond the clinical harm
Patients disengage
These failures leave patients frustrated and unlikely to follow through on a provider's recommendation. Patients engage when they feel like valued members of their own care team.
Staff burn out
Healthcare is in a staffing crisis. Manual referral chasing is exactly the administrative burden that pushes people out of the profession.
See the mechanism that addresses it.
Vendor-neutral applications.