- Ocean eReferrals are kept for 60 days in the "New" folder.
- If an appointment is booked for the referral, it will be maintained in Ocean for 30 days after the patient's booked appointment time.
- If there is no booked appointment, the referral will be maintained for 12 months, unless you have specified an estimated wait time in the "Scheduling" section of the referral.
- If you have specified a wait time, the referral will be maintained for the duration of the estimated wait time.
Maintaining eReferrals
- Should a referral appear in your deletion warnings and you would like to maintain it, you can click on the circular arrow at the end of the row (a.k.a. refresh symbol) to keep the referral for an additional 60 days.
Detailed Criteria
The Referral Purge Date is:
- 60 days after the creation date for all referrals left in the "New" tab,
- 12 months after the creation date for all "Accepted" referrals without an appointment,
- 12 months after the creation date for all "Accepted" referrals with an appointment OR 30 days after the scheduled appointment date (the longer period applies)
The referral is considered "Expired" if:
- It's after the Referral Purge Date UNLESS it's been manually retained another 60 days (by clicking on the refresh icon in the "Deletion Warnings" tab).
The Warning Period for deleting an expired referral is: 7 days.
A referral shows in the Deletion Warning Tab if:
- The referral is expired as of today + the Warning Period, and
- The referral is not processed/completed/exported.
A "Deletion Warnings" email is sent to the site at around 6am if:
- The referral is expired as of the current time of the email + the Warning Period, and
- The referral is not processed/completed/exported.
The referral is deleted if:
- The referral is expired (Ocean checks for expired referrals approximately every 6 hours).
Note: Your site may receive a "Deletion Warnings" email, only to find that there are no referrals in the "Deletion Warnings" tab. This could be the case, for example, if someone proceeded to "Complete" or "Process" the referral, or if someone exported the site's referrals as a backup.