Is your organisation struggling to manage referrals? Whether you are tasked with managing outpatient activity for a CCG or a prime contractor/accountable care organisation, or you are looking to better manage incoming referrals as a provider, our research indicates that you are likely to face one of the three big referral management challenges:
1) Rear-view mirror: Clinical interventions can’t be ‘undone’. By relying on post-intervention data you are missing out on t
he chance to influence and ensure the best pathway for the patient and you may be hit with an invoice three or six months later for a procedure of limited clinical value.
2) Poor data: Relying on SUS data and other post-event data to really understand the appropriateness of an intervention or the pathway, or to settle invoices, can be challenging. Post-event data collection is prone to errors and possible manipulation.
3) Manual processes: Better management of referrals to secondary care has typically been associated with manual processes. This is not only costly but can also introduce delays and is often linked to poor data collection.
Our ambition is clear: We want to achieve a 90% reduction in admin/triage costs and facilitate better, less costly pathway decisions for CCGs, prime contractors and providers. At psHEALTH we are on an exciting automation journey with our Referral Management/Single-Point-of-Access software solutions.
What have we demonstrated to date? Typically we would look to reduce cost in the first iteration by 30 to 60%, depending on the process. Thereafter it is a question of tweaking processes and incorporating lessons learned. Our triage engine can automatically kick off the analysis of incoming referrals and make automated decisions or suggestions – currently we are eliminating 50% to 70% of the admin cost from the total process. For some parts of the process we are achieving ‘three nines’ (=99.9%), for some parts the automation rate is 30% to 40% and, other parts of the process are still largely manual. But the biggest gain of course is to get the Right Patient, Right Pathway consistently correct. This drives better outcomes, increased patient satisfaction and importantly lower cost.
Call us for a discussion on what automation of referral management (including single-point-of-access) can do for you.
For the power of automation, view this short video.
Contact emma.walker@pshealth.co.uk or call us on 0845 50 50 120 to set up a discussion or system demonstration.