Closed Loop Referral Management
Now more than ever there is pressure and financial strain on hospitals and other care providers. This is increasing as the U.S. Healthcare systems are moving away from fee for service reimbursement models, and more towards a value or outcomes based care model. This isn’t limited or targeted on one particular area but to multiple aspects of healthcare, one such example of this is in Imaging departments, Radiologists must make patient-centered care a priority to drive bottom-line success. All types of providers including the imaging departments are leveraging the digital age, by using electronic health records (EHRs) and new strategies to help improve transparency within their own systems. Unfortunately, these tend to be only within a closed internal network, thus cutting themselves off from General Practitioners who are still using traditional methods, such as fax, letters and phone calls. This is a major challenge for creating a closed-loop referral management process, as some of the major challenges today are:
- Relying on print and hand delivery of images and reports
- Faxing reports (Huge risk under GDPR Compliance)
- Using costly, point-to-point HL7 interfaces to electronically exchange reports and images
Health information exchanges (HIEs) can help to expand this closed network, but as many have found, there are still many gaps and barriers. These relate to obtaining and managing consent of the image exchanges in the HIE. To see a return on investment of using an HL7 interface would require the processing of tens of thousands of transactions per year, over several years! With these challenges still at large, many health organizations are beginning to realize that now is the time more than ever to leverage new strategies to connect with the referring general practitioners (GPs), physicians, primary care providers, networks and other systems beyond the four walls of their organization.
A Closer Look at Closed Loop Referral Management
A growing concern from many health organizations is the substantial need for affordable and efficient connectivity between physician practices, hospitals and imaging centers, as well as a way to effectively manage those interactions.
According to the Healthcare Advisory Board, each year in the United States, 800 million imaging studies are performed, with 372 million of them done on an outpatient basis. Additionally, 12 percent of every primary care physician visit in the United States results in an imaging order, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That equals 44 million studies annually. With the manual processes that exist today, getting the millions of exam reports and images into the hands of clinical decision makers is both inefficient and costly, it is money that the industry simply cannot afford to waste.
That is where the closed loop referral management application, GetReferd, comes in to play. GetReferd’s unique process converts 100% of referrals into appointments in real time, reducing administration and greatly improving the patients’ experience. GetReferd doesn’t see people as patients, we see them as consumers. Unlike other major service sectors who have streamlined their processes to engage with their customers, health care has lagged behind. Often digitizing legacy workflows only to see the same results. Technology, when deployed in the right way, can have a profound effect on services. Making them more accessible, vastly more efficient and significantly more productive. At GetReferd we design consumer-focused applications that engage patients the way other patient-facing solutions can’t. It’s the driving force behind what we do every day. To find out more, check out the video below, or click to book a demo.
