Referral
Introduction
In a Swedish healthcare context, a referral is a demand for care that constitutes ordering of a service or a request for taking over medical responsibility for a patient. Data commonly included in a referral is the patient it concerns, the receiver, the requester and information that states e.g. the current issue, medical history etc.
The diagram below showcases an example of what a simple referral flow can look like. The orange arrows represent stages where referrals are acted upon or altered in any way.
Terms
The table below explains commonly used terms and abbreviations used in referral context.
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| Answer recipient | The person who will receive the answer. May or may not be the same as the requesting care provider. |
| Assessment | Assessment of the referral: whether it was sent to the correct unit and whether is contains enough information to be accepted (or rejected), and information about the continued handling. |
| Complementary answer | An answer sent after the final answer. |
| Consultation referral | Referral type where the requesting care provider asks for the opinion of the receiving care provider, but the medical responsibility (care commitment) remains with the requesting unit. |
| Final answer | The patient is treated and a final answer can be given. |
| Partial answer | The request is answered but the patient is still treated and a final answer cannot be given. |
| Private demand for care | Demand for care from patient or patient representative that initates the care process. There is a special type of private demand for care when the patient turns directly to specialist care without going through primary care. This is commonly referred to as self referral. |
Included Profiles
Resources included in the referral use cases are ServiceRequest, Task and Composition. Profiles for these are specified as following:
- ServiceRequestReferral - Profile for administrative/authorizing attributes in referral, e.g. date, performer, units, etc.
- TaskReferral - Profile for status handling and referral outputs, e.g. assessments and answers.
- CompositionReferralClinicalInformation - Profile for documentation/clinical part of a referral, answer or assessment.
- ServiceRequestSelfReferralSEVendorLite - Profile created to support a private demand for care.
The relationship between the profiles is specified in the image below.
Use Cases
- Get referral requests using ServiceRequestReferral.
- Get the reason for seeking care (private demand for care) using TaskReferral.
- Get the referral status and outcome (assessments and answers) using (https://simplifier.net/guide/CambioImplementationGuide2/ServiceRequestReferral).
- Post a private demand for care using ServiceRequestSelfReferralSEVendorLite.
Demarcations
- Payment agreement for the referral is not included in the API.
- Links to journal notes etc are not included.
- Internal data types with links to word document, pdf and pictures are not supported.
- Assessment care provider is not supported.