The ability to quickly learn how your patient found your practice or to which specialist you have referred your patient is instrumental in your visit interaction with your patient. I am presently working with an office that has expressed difficulty with tracking patient referrals. They have a long list of referral offices they use for specialty care, 8 oral surgeons, 5 periodontists, 6 endodontists and 5 orthodontists. Whew, that’s quite a list!
In the past, the office’s method has always been to keep a copy of the referral in the patient’s chart. That method worked well for them up until the time they decided to go chartless when they took away that paper chart earlier this year. So they are in desperate need for a new way to keep track of referrals within Easy Dental.
The Easy Dental Patient module provides Referred To and Referred By fields for quick reference. Simply double click to add a referral source to the referred to or referred by fields.
When selecting a Referred By source, you will choose from 3 different referral types. Patient is when a patient of your practice personally refers a friend or family member. Doctor is a source for selecting a dentist or other medical professional as the referral source. Other is a referral type reserved for all other “non-person” sources, such as Google, Facebook, Insurance, Walk-Ins, Advertisements, etc.
Selecting the Referred To source allows you to indicate the specialist you have referred your patient to. You are to select from your own personal list of referrals. For the office I am presently working with, this was the list of oral surgeons, periodontists, endodontists and orthodontists.
Now that you are comfortable with the process to link referrals to patients, let’s talk briefly about a few additional areas where referrals can be displayed or printed from within Easy Dental:
- Patient module (shown above) – select your patient to view Referred By and Referred To sources.
- Route Slip / Patient Visit Form – printed from the schedule module, the route slip or patient visit form are commonly used during the process of going chartless as offices often find the need for a reference sheet for quick patient information.
- Referred By / Referred To reports – generated from the Reports module, these are the best source for generating a list of patients referred by or referred to specific sources.
I like to operate on the motto that I keep my friends close and my referrals closer. The referral tracking tools allow for excellent record keeping and quick reference. Comment below or reach out to me by email with any questions on referral tracking.
David Broom is Senior Director of Product and Business Development. David has a master’s degree in Information Technology (IT) from the University of Texas in Dallas and has more than 35 years of experience from many global companies such as Hitachi Vantara, Methode Electronics, and Keane, Inc. In his current role, he is responsible for all aspects of the product management and field service teams at Henry Schein TechCentral, which identifies the ideal advanced technologies to meet the unique needs of the dental market and ensure that dental offices are using the right IT to be more efficient and effective.
