If you ever need to inquire about any Ocean eReferral(s) that have been received and processed for a certain patient in the past, you can easily look this up in the patient's eReferral history in Ocean.
For sites receiving eReferrals, it may be valuable to know if the patient has been referred to your site before, and some details of the previous referral(s). Fortunately, you can view a patient's "Referral History" directly from the eReferrals & eConsults View of the Ocean Portal.
Note: A health number and birth date must be included in the referral, in order for Ocean to identify the patient's referral history. This is because these two values are used to generate a unique patient identifier that is stored in Ocean with the referral.
- The "Referral History" captures the following referral information: Description, Status, Referring Site, Booked Date, Referral Date, Referrer, Provider, Protocol, and Priority.
Similar to referral analytics, because this referral history contains no patient health information (PHI), this data is not purged from Ocean over time. This means that if you were to receive a referral for a patient today, their referral history can still be viewed ten years from now.
If a previous referral is still in Ocean at the time that it's viewed, this referral can be selected from the "Referral History" window. This will open the referral, allowing you to view further details about this referral.
There are three methods to view a patient’s previous referral(s) (i.e. "Referral History"), as outlined below.
- When viewing referrals under the eReferrals & eConsults View in the Ocean Portal, there may be an "Open File" icon displayed on the far right hand side of the referral.
- This is a quick flag to indicate that there was at least one previous referral for the patient at your site. Simply click this icon to open and view the patient's referral history.
- If you already have a specific patient's referral open, the referral history can be accessed from the Action menu at the top right corner of the referral.
- Simply open this Action menu and then select "Referral History" to see if there were any previous referrals at your site for that patient.
If there is no referral for a specific patient currently sitting in the eReferrals & eConsults View of your Ocean Portal, you can still search for that specific patient's referral history.
This is useful if you have received a referral via fax and would like to see if there are records of any previous referrals for this patient in Ocean, for example.
- To search for a patient's referral history, go into the eReferrals & eConsults View in the Ocean Portal. From the Actions menu at the bottom left, select "Referral History".
- Enter the patient’s birth date and health card number, then select "Search".
- If no previous referrals are found, you will see a pop-up window, informing you as such.
- Otherwise, the "Referral History" window will appear.