Tag Archives: referral process

How to Enhance Referral Process in Healthcare Organizations

Many large hospitals and health systems are losing revenue in millions due to patient referral leakage. Every single patient who looks for care somewhere else is lost revenue now and in the future.

Common challenges in referral system

Majority of health systems experience some sort of challenges with their referral process, which potentially create a negative impact on patient satisfaction, clinical care, and outcomes. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of specialists receive no information from primary care physicians (PCPs) prior to referral visits, according to the Journal of General Internal Medicine. And incredibly, 40 percent of PCPs do not receive consult reports back from specialists following referrals, according to the Archives of Internal Medicine.

A lot of other challenges like the below lead to patient dissatisfaction, poor patient health outcomes which in-turn results in patient leakage and revenue loss.

  • Not being able to identify in-network specialists/providers
  • Providing unclear and incomplete information while referring patients to specialists or other in-network providers
  • Lack of mechanism to measure referral team’s performance or revenue outcomes
  • Inefficient process and ineffective prioritization
  • Challenges in the insurance authorization process, issues related to denials and write-offs
  • Manual processes and dependencies on paper-based communication
  • Inability to track patient leakage due to unclear referral process and lack of referral analytics

Related Topic: https://www.healthviewx.com/implementing-virtual-care-in-referral-management-to-enhance-patient-experience/

Analyzing Your Health System’s Improvement Opportunity

It is vital to identify gaps in the current process, understand challenges and make significant improvements in the referral process. Standardizing the process will help to make it efficient, and adopting technological solutions will not only streamline the process but also will save time and seal leakage. Providers need an end-to-end referral solution to meaningfully improve the handling of both incoming and outgoing referrals.

Here’s how healthcare providers can improve their referral process

Standardize your referral process

It is key for organizations to develop a consistent workflow and streamline the referral process that clearly delineates responsibilities depending on the role and the action to be taken. To achieve this excellence both clinical and operational leadership should collaborate and identify a suitable solution to help develop a strong referral system.

Choosing the technological solution that works

In spite of having a proactive and organized approach to tracking and handling referrals, some technology systems are still unable to facilitate workflows of best practice or provide the performance data required to manage the end-to-end process effectively. So choosing the right solution, and defining roles and responsibilities to support better referral management is crucial.

Defining vision and goals

Once the right technology solution is adopted and implemented, it is vital for the health system to understand the level of performance and opportunity. Analyzing the understanding the below is required

  •  From disparate referral process to a clear and standard process
  • From a decentralized to a centralized process 
  • From paper-based or manual processes to an automated single system that manages end-to-end processes.

Measure success that matters

Organizations need to track their journey towards excellence and ensure they are in par with the industry standards to provide enhanced care for their patients through quality care and better patient satisfaction.

What organizations need to understand?

Organizations should invest time and effort into their referral management. The entire team including clinical teams, operations teams, IT, referral teams, etc. should involve in choosing the right referral solution for a streamlined end-to-end automated referral solution. They also need to understand the potential of the referral software, and the potential revenue a technology-enabled workflow can bring into the system.

Schedule a demo. Talk to our experts to understand how HealthViewX Referral Management streamlines the referral workflow and automates the process seamlessly.

Transform Your Care Practice With A Streamlined Patient Referral Process

It is imperative to transform your care practice to deliver value-based care. Promoting and exploring technologies for streamlining various processes is the way forward for improved care quality and care coordination. One such process that requires a transformation in care practices is the patient referral process which is still a tedious, fragmented, and time-consuming task for referral coordinators in many health systems. The conventional patient referral process (both inbound and outbound) results in more stress for the referral coordinators and poor patient satisfaction. This inefficiency in the patient referral process leads to frustrated referral coordinators, physicians, specialists, patients and health systems as a whole. Patients not showing up for scheduled appointments are revenue loss for health systems that are trying to keep their patients within the network for better outcomes.

Today’s patient referral process makes it hard for patients to get the care they need, and healthcare facilities the visibility they need in the process. Additional challenges like lack of communication amongst providers, appointment delays, no-show rates, incorrect referral, etc. all have far-reaching consequences. Ineffective communication between clinical teams leads to poor health outcomes of patients and lost revenue for health systems. It is not a surprising fact, that more than half of the PCPs and Specialists are dissatisfied with the information they receive during a referral.

How to eliminate these challenges in the referral process?

A technological referral solution that offers end-to-end automation and is convenient for patients and providers is required to actively manage referrals and improve efficiency.

Healthcare providers need to adapt to an advanced technological solution that

–          is patient experience focused, process-driven, and easy to use

–          improves PCP, specialist experiences

–          has end-to-end referral workflow automation

–         intuitive dashboards with data insights and analytics

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management Solution is designed to help providers to focus on delivering high-quality coordinated care by keeping track of their patients throughout the care continuum. The solution makes the referral process efficient and simple with no burden on practice staff. It helps improve patient experience, reduces the burden on staff, improves operational efficiency, and overall benefits the health system in processing referrals.

Streamlining the patient referral process can help with

–          better care for individuals and the community as a whole

–          lowered cost and improved operational efficiency

–          reduced paperwork for referrals

–          awareness of in-network and out-of-network providers

–          improved patient experience and value-based care drive

–          better care coordination among providers

–          visibility into real-time data to understand referral patterns, referral staff performance, patient status tracking, and gaps in care.

HealthViewX Patient Referral Management Solution helps solve challenges in all stages of the referral workflow to meet the needs of the patients, healthcare providers, and payers, and also integrates seamlessly with all EMR systems. An intelligent end-to-end automated solution is essential for better provider connectivity, reducing network leakages, improving quality care, and better health outcomes.

Schedule a demo today with our experts to understand how our solution seamlessly solves challenges in the patient referral process.

How to build a strong referral network for your medical practice

Health systems and hospitals need to build a high performing and strong referral network as they serve a large community. For most health systems, out-of-network providers/physicians are the main sources for new patients. Hence in today’s highly competitive healthcare market, it is crucial for the health system to build, strengthen and maintain these referral relationships to have a strong referral network.

A strong referral network would need patients, referring physicians and receiving providers to keep a healthy network going. A referral solution has the potential to build a strong referral network. 

Here are some reasons as to why you need a solution to build a strong referral network 

  • Health systems need to reduce referral leakage and ensure they don’t refer patients out of their network
  • Referral coordinators have to ensure timely scheduled appointments for their patients 
  • Health systems need to reduce their no-show rates
  • Referral coordinators need to coordinate care between the internal and external providers for better patient outcomes.
  • Hospitals / Health systems need to create and manage a high performing referral network 
  • To obtain more complete and detailed analytics to improve their patient inflow
  • Track patient status at every stage and ensure referral loop closure 

Healthcare providers need to adopt healthcare IT and embrace interoperability. Therefore, the only way to build this strong referral network is to identify and implement the right referral solution for your practice. 

HealthViewX Patient referral management solution can bring in the following benefits for the health systems and help strengthen your referral network

  • Reduced patient no-show rate
  • Reduced referral leakage
  • Increase operational efficiency
  • Patient satisfaction
  • Increased revenue
  • Streamlined referral life cycle management

Making small changes in the way health systems handle referrals will help to retain the patients within the network. Thus, retaining patients within the network, giving quality care will lead to better clinical outcomes.  HealthViewX patient referral management solution acts as a bridge and enables seamless communication between the referring provider and the receiving provider. It helps in making meaningful decisions on the referral process thus making the change that the health system requires today.

Staying ahead in healthcare technology is imperative as it will bring massive benefits to the day-to-day operations and can empower the practice as a whole. A more streamlined process can lead to patient satisfaction, happier referral sources and patients thus making the network strong through quality care.  Once the entire referral process is fine-tuned providers can fully focus on patient care and relationships with referral sources.

Optimizing referral management will help large health systems and hospitals improve overall efficiency and referral network. Data analytics feature will help providers to understand –  the referral patterns, the highest referring source, the lowest referring provider, no-show rates, referral leakage, missed appointments, etc. HealthViewX works with each of its clients to understand their current challenges in the referral system and tunes the referral process to overcome these challenges and build a strong referral network.

HealthViewX patient referral management is highly customizable and is used by leading FQHCs, Large Hospitals, Dental Universities, and Specialities. Do you want to build a strong referral network?

 Schedule a demo with HealthViewX referral management solution experts today!