Around 25 per cent of referrals received by the Central Referral Service (CRS) each day are not able to be processed.
More than 10 per cent of the referrals received are duplicates (submitted multiple times and/or via multiple methods). This contributes to delays in other referrals being processed as duplicate referrals must be checked to ensure they are not an amended referral containing new information.
A further 10 per cent of referrals are missing the information necessary for the CRS to be able to process the referrals. This may be due to missing pages or missing clinical information.
Other referrals received by the CRS remain out of scope for processing. This includes referrals to ‘immediate’ clinics (for patients that need to be seen the same week), or referrals needing to be sent directly to the relevant WA Department of Health Outpatient Service such as mental health, allied health and antenatal clinics. Refer to the WA Department of Health website for more information on eligible referrals.
Out of scope referrals are forwarded to a hospital based central receipting department and do not go through the full CRS process. Acknowledgements cannot be sent to the referrer or the patient in this case and CRS does not have visibility of the status of these referrals once forwarded on.
The CRS is continuing to work towards public outpatient referrals moving to a digital system within the next few years.
Advice for referrers:
- Secure messaging is the preferred and most reliable way to send referrals in. Any difficulties with secure messaging (e.g. attaching results) may be helped by troubleshooting with your practice software provider.
- The most common missing referral information is patient weight, full blood count and ferritin for endoscopy referrals and pelvic ultrasound and cervical screening test for gynaecology referrals.