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The referral process can become difficult, inefficient and confusing for patients and clinicians. Patients sometimes fail to receive appropriate care, clinicians grow increasingly frustrated over the lack of timely, complete referral information, and hospitals and clinicians lose revenue due to missed appointments or inaccurate documentation. A study in the journal Pediatrics noted that primary care physicians (PCPs) who receive referral information provide optimum care in 96 percent of cases while those who receive no information deliver the best care only 35 percent of the time.
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"Automation of the patient referral process, more often a disjointed and cumbersome workflow, is a critical capability of a clinical portal or HIE solution," said Barry Runyon, Research Vice President at Gartner Healthcare Providers. "It is of particular value when it leverages existing hospital, physician and payer systems and has strong tracking and reporting capabilities."
Part of Carefx's Fusionfx suite of workflow solutions, eReferral transforms the onerous, bureaucratic, paper-shuffling referral process into a disciplined workflow that facilitates and standardizes collaboration, improves patient care quality and safety and increases referral volume and revenues.
Referral Revenues Projected To Increase by $7 MM Annually
Boston Medical Center (BMC), named one of America's Best Hospitals by U.S. News and World Report, leverages eReferral to provide its 1,500 clinicians with composite views of relevant patient information housed in diverse systems. Clinicians and referral coordinators can find specialists, book appointments online, transmit clinical data and track referrals from beginning to end through BMC's unified eReferral portal. Since going live with the product in May, BMC has surpassed 1,000 referrals and continues to add approximately 100 referrals per day. In addition, BMC has already realized a significant return on investment (ROI), resulting in a net 20 percent improvement in scheduled referrals, net 5 percent reduction in no-shows, 10 percent referral volume growth and is projected to generate an additional $7 million annually, based on preliminary ROI analysis.
"eReferral has helped our patients obtain appropriate, hassle-free care, and our resource utilization has been optimized due to a decrease in missed clinic appointments," said Meg Aranow, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at BMC. "Quality, safety and physician satisfaction have increased, and the system architecture will serve as a foundation for other collaborative messaging between physicians in the community and the specialty clinics at the hospital."
Built on the Fusionfx portal framework, eReferral manages outpatient and inpatient referring physician communications. The eReferral solution includes:
"Carefx's eReferral addresses the business goals and challenges of healthcare executives," said Qi Li, M.D., Vice President of Clinical Strategies for Carefx. "CEOs seek to improve outcomes, ensure access and minimize exposure and disruptions. COOs need eReferral to prioritize higher value units, strengthen referrals and utilize nurses consistently. CFOs see eReferral as a tactic to ensure payment, reduce no-shows, and enhance revenues. And, CMOs are eager to use eReferral to preserve patient safety, reduce errors and generate quality data for reporting purposes."
eReferral also supports hospitals, IDNs and HIEs in fulfilling the care coordination and information exchange requirements of meaningful use as articulated by the HIT Policy Committee of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). The 2011 objectives call for hospitals to exchange key clinical information among providers of care and authorized entities and to perform reconciliation of encounters at each transition of care.
About Boston Medical Center
Boston Medical Center is a private, not-for-profit, 575-licensed bed, academic medical center located in Boston's historic South End. The hospital is the primary teaching affiliate for Boston University School of Medicine. Emphasizing community-based care, Boston Medical Center, with its mission to provide consistently accessible health services to all, is the largest safety net hospital in New England.
About Carefx Corporation
Carefx supports healthcare organizations in achieving their vision of advancing the quality and safety of patient care delivery through its Fusionfx solution suite. Fusionfx streamlines and simplifies clinical and business workflow and connects care providers to the information they need - where, when, and how they need it. By managing care transitions and information gaps between diverse systems, departments and facilities, Fusionfx delivers crucial patient information with speed, efficiency and logic. Carefx supports more than 600 hospitals, health systems, regional health information organizations (RHIOs) and health information exchanges (HIEs) across North America and Europe.
For more information about the eReferral solution, Carefx can be reached at (480) 833-5010 or by email at [email protected].
-- Enhanced Referral Lists and Tracking -- EMR Integration -- In-depth Provider Dictionaries -- Detailed Insurance, Instruction and Clinical Data -- Rapid, Accurate Scheduling -- Complete, Patient-Friendly Summaries -- Comprehensive Reporting
SOURCE Carefx Corporation
