Work through referrals

Start the day

Start in Today to check the oldest outstanding work and its administrative owners. Each person signs in with their own account.

1. In Today, choose Take for unclaimed administrative work. Avoid starting the same work as another staff member.
2. Open the referral in Inbox to read the original wording and recorded history.
3. Check the administrative details and record what is missing or needs follow-up.
4. After the practice takes an action, record what happened and the next step.

Referrals stay in arrival order. A follow-up date, practitioner assignment or the referrer’s stated urgency does not move one ahead of another. Clinical decisions stay with the practice; Refera shows clinical wording verbatim with attribution.

Made-up example. The oldest arrival opens first. Here the letter is hard to read, so Refera shows what it can assert and does not guess the referrer.

Find a patient fast

Press the magnifier, or / or Ctrl+K on a keyboard, to search while a referral is open. Type the way the caller gives it:

• a name in either order, such as Surname, First or first surname, with or without a title like Mr, Mrs or Dr;
• a date of birth as DD/MM/YYYY or D/M/YYYY;
• a phone number with spaces or punctuation, starting with 0 or +61.

Each result shows the date of birth and the referral’s status so you can tell two patients with the same name apart. Refera never opens a result for you; choose the right one.

Call from the referral

A phone number in a referral shows a Call link beside its copy button. On a phone it opens the dialler; on a computer it opens the calling app the computer uses. Calling records nothing. After the call, record what actually happened.

Unsaved changes are protected

If you have edited or filled in a draft, Refera does not throw it away when you press Esc, close the referral, move to the next one or open a search result. It shows Unsaved changes with two plain choices: Keep editing or Discard changes. A draft you have not touched closes as normal. The prompt covers moves inside Refera only: a page reload or closing the tab loses an unsaved draft.

Keep ownership clear

The administrative owner is the person handling the next job. Practitioner assignment identifies the clinician or service; it does not assign reception work or prove that contact happened.

Staff can take unclaimed work and return their own work to the shared queue. Owners and Admins can assign or hand work to an active team member. A general Practice team label means no individual owner. Use Take and Return in Today; Owners and Admins also have the administrative-owner selector there. This is separate from practitioner assignment and booking-workflow controls in Inbox. Every change remains in the history.

Record contact and booking separately

Review any prepared text before using it through the practice’s approved phone, SMS or email channel. Refera currently provides copy-ready text; it does not create an Outlook draft or send it. Patient-contact drafting begins only after staff move the referral into the booking workflow and check the contact basis and destination.

Record a contact attempt only after it happens. Approving text is not evidence of contact or a booking.

Create the appointment in the practice’s existing booking system or PMS, then record that booking and its named system and time in Refera. The practice system remains the appointment record; Refera does not create a second diary or write back to it.

Hand over the next step

Before finishing a shift, check that unfinished work has an owner or has deliberately returned to the team. Record the actual outcome, any agreed follow-up and what the next person needs to do. Leave uncertain outcomes unconfirmed.

If new arrivals seem delayed, check the selected mailbox in Connections and use the practice’s usual inbox process while it is investigated. A quiet list is not proof that no referrals arrived.

Optional workflow and measure reference

Cancellation Fill keeps a deterministic order

Real-patient use is off by default pending separate privacy, legal and practice-operational approval. Connecting the inbox does not enable it.

• Cancellation Fill is off for real patients until separately approved. Connecting an inbox does not enable it.

Cancellation Fill remains separate from the referral Inbox:

• Ready to book follows original referral arrival order.
• Earlier appointment follows the patient’s recorded available-from date, then original referral arrival order.

Only the first eligible record can have an active offer. Staff approve the draft, contact the patient through the practice’s usual channel and confirm the booking in the practice system. Clinical content never changes either ordering rule.

The value ledger

These definitions describe optional measures only where the practice has an enabled view. They are not a promise that every measure is available.

The value ledger reports only what the recorded evidence supports.

Measure	What counts
Backlog age	Time since receipt for work that is still open.
Time to first contact	Receipt to the first recorded patient-contact attempt. It remains unavailable when event coverage is incomplete.
Bookings recorded	A staff-confirmed booking event in the named practice system, not a draft or contact attempt.
Cancellations filled	A cancellation slot that staff marked filled, not an offer or acceptance alone.
Staff time estimate	Shown only when the practice provides its own minutes-per-action baseline and the supporting event data is complete.
Appointment value estimate	Shown only from a practice-entered slot value or documented practice baseline. It is an estimate, not booked or recovered revenue.

Missing evidence stays visible as unavailable. Refera does not fill gaps with a benchmark or an invented estimate. Owners and Admins can enter or clear the optional time and appointment-value figures under Settings > Practice profile > Impact estimates.

Related

• Patient booking worklist
• Team accounts and roles
• Referral analytics
• Continuity and the queue

Administrative process-state only - Refera performs no clinical triage.