Referral Coordination for OB/GYN Practices

Inbound referrals arriving by phone are captured with the referring practice, the referring clinician, the stated reason as written, and how the referral document was sent
A referred patient who calls before the paperwork arrives is booked or held according to your rules, and the missing document becomes a task rather than a reason to turn her away
Outbound referrals are handled as handoffs, capturing which records, imaging and pathology have to travel with the patient and who is chasing them
Co-management referrals are distinguished from transfers of care, because a patient shared with maternal-fetal medicine keeps a schedule in both practices and a transferred patient does not
Referring offices calling to check on their patient reach a workflow that captures the enquiry and routes it, instead of being put on hold behind patient calls
Where your protocol assigns an expedited path to a specific referral category, the system follows it exactly as written and makes no judgement of its own about urgency

How it pays back

Two Referral Directions, One Front Desk

Few specialties sit as squarely in the middle of a referral chain. Primary care, urgent care and emergency departments send patients in; maternal-fetal medicine, gynecologic oncology, urogynecology, reproductive endocrinology and genetics take patients out. The same staff handle both, with different information requirements in each direction, and the two queues silently compete for the same twenty minutes.

The Referral That Arrives Without a Patient

A faxed referral with no phone follow-up is the classic open loop: it lands in a queue, nobody calls the patient, and the practice finds out months later. Turning inbound referrals into structured records with a contact number and an outbound task means the loop is closed by a workflow rather than by whoever notices.

Co-Management Is a Scheduling Relationship

A pregnancy co-managed with maternal-fetal medicine is not a transfer. The patient continues to attend your office on a cadence while also attending elsewhere, and both schedules have to stay coherent. Recording the arrangement as co-management, with the other practice named, is what stops your recall system treating her absence as a lapse.

Records Are the Slow Part, Not the Appointment

For an outbound referral, what delays the subspecialty visit is rarely their availability. It is imaging, pathology and prior notes that have not travelled. Capturing which documents are required and where they live, at the point the referral is made, gives your staff a checklist rather than a discovery process a week later.

Both directions captured

Inbound referrals and outbound handoffs handled as structured records, not messages

24/7 coverage

Referring offices and referred patients reach a live workflow outside your business hours

HIPAA BAA included

Referral, identifier and records data encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS in transit

Frequently asked questions

Does the system decide how urgently a referral should be seen?

No. Your practice defines referral categories and the booking path each one follows, and the system applies that mapping to what the referring office or patient states. It does not interpret an indication, assess acuity or decide that one referral outranks another. Anything outside your defined categories routes to your staff.

How are referrals that arrive by fax handled?

The phone workflow covers the calls attached to them: the patient ringing to book, the referring office chasing, and your own outbound contact. Where document intake can be automated for your setup, that is available through secure workflow automation, and custom integration is available. The aim is that no referral sits in a queue with nobody assigned to call.

What is captured on an outbound referral?

The receiving practice or subspecialty, whether the arrangement is co-management or a transfer, the records, imaging and pathology that must accompany the patient, and who owns each chase. Nothing clinical is authored on the call; the reason for referral is recorded as your clinician stated it.

Can referring offices reach us without waiting behind patients?

Yes. Calls identifying as a clinical office can be routed on a separate path with its own handling and escalation, so a referring practice is not queued behind the morning's booking calls. Because every line is answered concurrently, neither queue blocks the other.

How does this affect our recall lists?

Co-managed patients are marked as such, so recall logic does not treat visits happening at the other practice as missed care, and does not chase a patient who is under active subspecialty management. The distinction is only as good as the data captured at the point of referral, which is why it is a structured field rather than free text.

Where do referral records land?

In the destination you nominate: an EHR referral or task queue, a shared inbox, or a structured summary your staff files. Delivery is live and currently deployed on a number of platforms, available through API or FHIR on others, and available through secure workflow automation elsewhere.

Inbound Referrals In, MFM and Gyn-Onc Referrals Out