Smart Referrals Workflow Solution (SRWS) is an electronic referral management application. Smart Referrals enables referrals to be electronically delivered to the relevant service, categorised and uploaded into the integrated electronic medical record (ieMR).

The key benefits of SRWS are:

• Decrease risk of lost paper
• Real-time tracking of referrals and better visibility of bottlenecks
• Letter and SMS correspondence functionality
• Decision-support functions including appointment history, referral history, catchment area, Clinical Prioritisation Criteria (CPC) and treating age validation
• Instant redirection by local units when required
• Faster patient access to services
• All steps in the process including any comments are visible and auditable

Smart Referrals Workflow Solution started its life at CHQ as eRefer.

Phase I – May 2016

At this time eRefer was created by CHQ to manage issues with paper based referral processing.  eRefer was created on the Service Now platform and was used only in the Central Referral Unit (CRU) as a way of managing referral documents.  The referrals would be faxed by referring doctor (RD) and automatically added to eRefer as a pdf.  The CRU would then process the referral details into HBCIS and print the referral with a summary coversheet. The referral would then progress in the paper format to the Specialties (PODS) for categorisation and further processing onto the waiting list.

Phase II – November 2017

In November 2017 the fully digital end to end solution of eRefer was released, developed further by CHQ again using Service Now platform. This second phase eliminated the need for paper-based referrals to be moved around QCH and by use of queues the referral digitally moved from department to department:

1. Referral Received into eRefer per phase I
2. Referral processed by CRU and allocated to the specialty
   • The referral (for some specialties) would be triaged by CRU Nurse
3. All referrals would then progress to state of Awaiting Categorisation where clinical staff from the specialties would categorise or decline or allocate the referral to a different specialty
4. 1 The categorised referral would then move to a queue for the POD administration officer to process into ESM

OR

4. 2 The declined referral is then on a Not Accepted queue for the POD AO to send correspondence out of eRefer advising the RD and patient of the decline

5. All referrals are then finalised (closed) in eRefer and move to a queue for HIS to upload the documents (referral form, notes and coversheet) into the ieMR

N.b. Referrals allocated to another specialty would be removed from the original specialty queue and move to Awaiting Categorisation of the new allocated specialty

Phase III – June 2018

In June 2018, the eRefer name was changed to Smart Referrals Workflow Solution (SRWS) and became a state-wide system, endorsed by Qld Health as the preferred digital referral solution.  SRWS has now been rolled out to the majority of HHS in Queensland.

Further enhancements to SRWS now allows the HHS to redirect referrals electronically to another HHS including other referral management systems.

GP Smart Referrals (GPSR) has also been added to allow GPs to refer directly into SRWS using GPSR application added to the practice software or via Medical Objects (STS).  Notifications are digitally sent between SRWS and GPSR for status changes including accepted, categorised and declined.

SRWS (& eRefer) has revolutionised the processing of referrals at CHQ.