Electronic referrals

E-referrals or electronic referrals or electronic consultation is an electronic platform that enables the seamless transfer of patient information from a primary to a secondary treating practitioner's client management system. E-referrals have fast become the best replacement of paper-based referrals, and hold great potential toward the ultimate goal of seamless communication and information sharing between practitioners.

Electronic referrals can result in considerable benefits for service providers. Firstly at the patient level, e-referrals ensure significant improvements to follow-up care coordination by the creation of accurate and timely referrals. Medical decisions are enhanced as each provider involved has the full patient information available to them. Duplicate tests are eliminated as patient information is being shared from one provider to another. The speed of communication is improved by removing delays related to paper-based transmission, ensuring a faster response rate. Also transmission of referral information is secured, upholding Consumer privacy.

Benefits can also be seen beyond the patient level, e-referrals can improve practice productivity. Documentation quality is improved by removing the use of illegible handwriting as well as poor quality faxed documentation. E-referrals create a logical and standardised referral template. Auto-population of clinical information ensures referrals are more clinically complete. There are also significant long term operational cost savings between electronic and paper based referrals.

A variety of barriers exist that inhibit the electronic General practitioner referral pathway to secondary care. These include the high start-up costs such as that of hardware, software and training needed to produce, process, send and receive each electronic referral. Difficulties faced when integrating different information systems to allow technology interface. As well as a slow response due to a deep rooted resistance to change and new technologies.

Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is an international standard developed by the organisation Health Level 7 International, outlining the unvarying structure and presentation for clinical documents like that of e-referrals. The CDA:

The e-referral initiative has been acknowledged globally, with many countries having successfully adopted the system. Including Finland who implemented the e-referral in 1990, Denmark in 1995,Norway in 1996, Netherlands in 2001, New Zealand in 2007. and Australia in 2009.

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