It’s no secret that patient referrals are essential to the healthcare system. The process is a low-tech interaction, often ad hoc, that requires manual document processing. It’s cumbersome and causes delays in patient access to care, negative effects on health outcomes and increased operational costs. 

Behavioral health providers face a unique set of challenges. As the need for their services increases, a shortage of providers and limited health insurance coverage hinder access to care.  There’s now an urgent need to move the patient intake process to the cloud – to prevent errors, provide analytics for tracking patient referrals and visits and streamline the process. 

In this playbook, we discuss ways technology can leverage the power of AI and machine learning to streamline workflows. The playbook covers:

• Unique challenges of behavioral health providers
• Anatomy of a referral – the current process – and the need to automate
• A new process for healthcare referrals