Improving the effectiveness of electronic health recordbased referral processes

Outpatient referrals, defined as processes that include a transfer of responsibility for some aspect of patient’s care from a referring provider to a secondary service or provider, [1] are an important but challenging aspect of primary care practice. Successful coordination of referrals hinges upon effective and timely communication to facilitate information sharing and transfer of patient care responsibilities between outpatient providers [210]. However, referral communication related to both provider-provider and provider-patient interactions [3,11-14] is prone to breakdown [2,1422]. The growing use of referral care [23] suggests the need for improving reliability and efficiency of the referral process to create a greater impact on health care quality.