Veracity Referral Intake Calls

Referral calls come from two directions

Referring offices call to send a patient, check whether a consult request arrived or ask for an earlier appointment for someone they are worried about. Patients call because their doctor told them to, often unsure what the referral was for or whether the paperwork has reached you.

The two callers need different questions, and both end up in phone tag when the referral coordinator is on another line. A referral that stalls at the phone is a patient who is not being seen.

When a referring office calls

Katie records what your coordinator needs to work the referral, rather than a name and a number scrawled on a pad.

Referring offices are busy too. A staff member who reaches a live answer and a clear process is more likely to call you first next time, rather than sending the patient to whichever practice picked up.

• Referring provider, practice name and a direct callback line that skips their phone tree
• Patient name and date of birth
• The reason for the referral as the office describes it
• Whether the referring office considers it urgent, in their words
• Whether records or a referral form have been sent, or are still to come

When the patient makes the call

Patients often call before the referral paperwork arrives. Katie captures who referred them, what they were told, their insurance details and when they can come in. Your coordinator can match the call to the referral once it lands, rather than asking the patient to try again later.

If the patient describes worsening symptoms while waiting, that part of the call follows your escalation rules to clinical staff. Katie does not decide how soon a referred patient should be seen.

Physician-to-physician consult calls

A physician calling to speak with one of your physicians about a patient is a different call from an office scheduling a referral. Your rules decide how those are handled: transferred to the provider or nurse while the office is open, or captured with the calling physician's direct number and the nature of the question so your physician can return it promptly.

Getting this right matters for relationships with referral sources. A colleague who reaches a person, or gets a prompt callback, keeps sending patients.

Tracking referrals in Veracity

Your staff enter and track each referral in Veracity, using the structured summary as the starting point. MedReception AI is live with practices on Veracity, and the summary looks the same whether the caller was a referring office, a patient or a hospital discharge planner, which keeps referral intake predictable for the coordinator.

A consistent intake also shows which referral relationships matter. When every referral call is written up the same way, your practice manager can see which offices send patients most often and what each one asked for, without keeping a separate log.