As of October 27, 2023, updates will be made to outpatient referral orders in Connect Care, including a requirement in the order composer for referral reason details to be entered in the "Comments" section. Details of the enhancements are described in a Support posting.
The change could affect prescribers who have already saved personalizations of referral orders. Any saved personal defaults for the Comments field in specific referral orders will need to be redone. Users with Order Sets and Smart Sets with customized documentation in the Comments section of the referral orders can save their current customizations and re-enter these after the October 27 change. Customized referral orders in preference lists are not affected.
Why are we making these changes?
Referral triage and management are key to ensuring timely access to services. We have received important feedback from prescribers that both order and receive referrals. Many referrals are being entered that do not have enough clinical information to be useful. For those receiving referrals, the information that they require to make triage, scheduling, and treatment decisions is not always available to them in a useful format.
A group of prescribers with representation from surgical and medical specialties, as well as primary care, were consulted about improving referral management. Additional enhancements are planned in the future.