Data Element
Referral code
Description

A code that identifies a particular service (i.e., procedure, diagnostic investigation, or panel of investigations) that have been requested.
Submitted By: Adam Bazer, MPD / Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise USA (IHE USA)
Data Element Information
Use Case Description(s)
Use Case Description This use case pertains to the adoption of all of the defined data elements to be used as in the following use case.
a 28-year-old female, is going home from the hospital after having an infection due to systemic fibrosis. The doctors prescribed oxygen after treatment, and call a transport company to take her to a rehabilitation center. Alison is a paraplegic and is wheelchair bound. Due to the prescribed oxygen, there needs to be monitoring for her transport. The hospital creates a referral for her transport. The reasons for referral are heavily used to justify her transport for billing and payment. The referral requestor is used to identify who is requesting the service. The referral coverage includes the insurance information that may be needed to cover the event. The referral code indicates what type of service is being requested, in this case interfacility transport.
Estimate the breadth of applicability of the use case(s) for this data element This data class would utilized by emergency responders and ambulance systems that are used for interfacility transport. It will also be of interest for any provider engaged in continuity of care referrals.
Link to use case project page https://www.ihe.net/uploadedFiles/Documents/PCC/IHE_PCC_Suppl_RIPT.pdf
Healthcare Aims
  • Improving patient experience of care (quality and/or satisfaction)
  • Improving provider experience of care
Maturity of Use and Technical Specifications for Data Element
Applicable Standard(s) Routine Interfacility Patient Transport (RIPT) - https://www.ihe.net/uploadedFiles/Documents/PCC/IHE_PCC_Suppl_RIPT.pdf
https://hl7.org/fhir/R4/servicerequest.html
Additional Specifications Routine Interfacility Patient Transport (RIPT) - https://www.ihe.net/uploadedFiles/Documents/PCC/IHE_PCC_Suppl_RIPT.pdf
https://hl7.org/fhir/R4/servicerequest.html
Current Use This data element has been used at scale between multiple different production environments to support the majority of anticipated stakeholders
Supporting Artifacts 360 Exchange Closed Loop Referral (360X) Connecathon testing in 2019
Used in multiple HIMSS Demos
Extent of exchange 5 or more. This data element has been tested at scale between multiple different production environments to support the majority of anticipated stakeholders.
Potential Challenges
Restrictions on Standardization (e.g. proprietary code) none
Restrictions on Use (e.g. licensing, user fees) none
Privacy and Security Concerns none
Estimate of Overall Burden I anticipate that this may have a low burden for implementation since this data class and elements exist in FHIR and CDA for medical referrals, which has a large populations of stakeholders that already use this data class.
Other Implementation Challenges none

Comment

Submitted by nedragarrett_CDC on

Unified Comment from CDC

  • Referral data elements, such as reason, requestor, and coverage, are important to support CDC’s efforts in streamlining the efficient exchange of health information between healthcare providers and principally extra-clinical program service systems that reside in community services, lifestyle change, public health, and other organizations. These data elements play a major role in identifying appropriate services based on the patient’s health needs and aid in ensuring appropriate parties involved in the overall health and wellbeing of the patient are receiving information regarding the patient intake outcome, referral service provisioning, and final referral outcome. The referral data elements are also useful to understand how often patients are referred to specialist for occupational illnesses.
     
  • Support for healthcare aims:  Also supports Improving health of populations and Reducing cost of care, Improving provider experience of care.
     
  • Additional Technical Specification: Bidirectional Services eReferrals (BSeR) FHIR Implementation Guide

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