Overview

There are several ways to send a referral from Cerbo. The recommended way is to create, within Cerbo, a referral order form, and attach it to a relevant encounter note (with additional documents, if desired). This will ease the process of transmitting relevant documents to external providers' offices. 


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Details

To make this process more efficient, first, go to Admin > Manage > Specialists/Other Listings, add the specialists that you work with to the list. 


Generating and Sending Referral Orders

We recommend using referral orders for your referrals. These allow you to see outstanding referrals that you have sent in the patient's Open Orders block. The steps to create and send a referral order - along with the encounter note, additional documents, and/ or the full patient's chart, if desired - are below.


  1. Add Referral order(s) into your orders/ labs database.  
    • Add an order called "Referral", with an order code of N/A, leaving all other fields blank. Make sure to select Procedure Type > Referral to Specialist.
    • You may also add multiple different referrals for your referrals to different types of specialties, e.g. "Physical Therapy Referral," "Acupuncture Referral," etc. in the same way.
  2. Add the referral orderto the patient's chart (just as you would add a lab or imaging order). If this is done within the Plan of an encounter note, it becomes simple to send the referral order along with that encounter note (see below).
    • In the ordering window, type or copy/paste your letter to the specialist, if desired, in the Notes to Lab field. Note: you can use Chart Parts to populate the body of your letter. See "How can I template out my referral letters?", below.
    • Note that you do not select where to send the referral at this step, but at the sending step below.
  3. Generate the printable/ faxable/ savable Order Form
    • Select who you want to receive the fax at the top (or type in a fax number). If you have added your specialists to your contact book under Admin > Manage > Specialists, you can quickly pull up and add their information (and fax number) using the Search for Additional Specialists option.
    • If you are sending just the referral order, you can fax from this step directly. 
    • To send the referral + other documents, Save the form.
  4. Sending options:
    • Send the referral order along with the encounter note (and other documents, as desired):
      1. Generate the referral order form from inside the encounter note. 
      2. Save the referral order form, making sure the option to attach it to the Encounter Note is selected.
      3. Attach any other documents to the encounter note that you'd like to include with the referral, by clicking on the paperclip icon to the bottom right of the encounter note.
      4. Then go to Generate > Fax/Print Encounter Note. Select the option to include the attached document(s).
    • Send the referral order along with the entire patient's chart
      • Go to Generate > Printable Patient Chart, modify that document as needed, then click Save to save it as a document in the patient's chart. 
      • Then send it along with just the referral order by right clicking on the saved referral order and selecting the option to fax, and then using the option at the top to attach additional documents.
      • Or send it along with the encounter note as above by attaching the saved printable patient chart to the encounter note.


Other Options for Referrals

If you do not want to use referral orders, there are other options for generating and sending referrals. 


Simple referral letter using the blank editable form template

From either the patient's dashboard or an encounter note, go to Generate > Blank Editable Form Template.

  • In the window that appears, select which print/fax template you want to use (if applicable), and click on the blank area of the template form to write your notes to the specialist.
  • Note: you can use Chart Parts to populate the body of your letter. See "How can I template out my referral letters?", below.
  • Select who you want to receive the fax at the top (or type in a fax number). Then send as a fax, print, and/or save a copy to the patient's chart (and share via the Patient Portal).


Simple referral letter + encounter note using Fax/ Print Encounter Note

  1. From within the relevant encounter note, go to Generate > Fax/ Print Encounter Note.
  2. Use checkboxes at the top to of the faxable/printable version of the encounter note that appears to "Include a cover page", and "Include H&P" (patient demographics, insurance info, other basic patient info), if desired.
  3. Click on the cover page body, if applicable, to add your referral letter. Note: you can use Chart Parts to populate the body of your letter. See "How can I template out my referral letters?", below.
  4. Select who you want to receive the fax at the top (or type in a fax number). Then send as a fax, print, and/or save a copy to the patient's chart (and share via the Patient Portal).


Simple referral letter + encounter note + document(s) using Fax/ Print Encounter Note

  1. Attach the document(s) you would like to include to the relevant Encounter Note.
    • The option to attach is found "Attach document or image" link just below the "Save & Sign" button in the note (or under the "Unsign" button in a signed note).  
    • Choose "Select Existing Pt Document" and choose from the documents in their chart.
  2. Then, go to Generate > Fax/ Print Encounter Note.
  3. Use checkboxes at the top to of the faxable/printable version of the encounter note that appears to "Include a cover page", and "Include H&P" (patient demographics, insurance info, other basic patient info), if desired, as well as to append the additional document(s) to the fax.
  4. Click on the cover page body, if applicable, to add your referral letter. Note: you can use Chart Parts to populate the body of your letter. See "How can I template out my referral letters?", below.
  5. Select who you want to receive the fax at the top (or type in a fax number). Then send as a fax, print, and/or save a copy to the patient's chart (and share via the Patient Portal).


Simple referral letter + full patient chart using the Printable Patient Chart

  1. From the patient's dashboard, go to Generate > Printable Patient Chart.
  2. Use the embedded Remove links to remove any parts of the chart that you don't want to include.
  3. Check the box at the top to "Add a cover page," if desired. Type or copy/paste your letter to the specialist into the cover page. Note: you can use Chart Parts to populate the body of your letter. See "How can I template out my referral letters?", below.
  4. Select who you want to receive the fax at the top (or type in a fax number). Then send as a fax, print, and/or save a copy to the patient's chart (and share via the Patient Portal).


How can I create referral letter templates?

Go to Admin > Manage > Chart Parts and Add New. Give your template a name, e.g., referral-phys-therapy (just remember not to use spaces!) and nicknames, if desired. Add the stock referral letter text that you want to use in the main text area, and click Add at the bottom to save.


To populate an encounter note, or editable form, etc. with the text of the created chart part, start typing its name or a nickname in the text area as shown on the left. The system will display a set of matches based on the typed string. Select the correct one.


For more help, see Using Chart Parts to create template messages


Next, highlight the text and either:

  1. Select "...Create Fax with Selected" from the menu that appears to create a Blank Faxable Form with the already in the body of the form, 
  2. or Copy (Ctrl + C), then paste the text into the Notes to Lab field (if using the Referral Order), Blank Faxable Form body (simple referral letter), or Cover Page.


How can I quickly pull up the Specialists' information without leaving my note?

  • If you have the specialist's info under Admin > Manage > Specialists, you can use the quick-add prefix to search for that name. To do so, in the main text area of your SOAP note, type "sp", followed by the first couple letters of the specialist's name (using underscores to separate multiple search terms). Click on the specialist's name in the suggested matches that appear. This pulls their information into the main text area of your note and suggests adding the specialist to the patient's preferred Facilities and Specialists (this is optional). 
  • From the main text area, you can easily copy/paste the contact information into, for example, a recommendation that the patient would see on their encounter summary.


Special Use Cases

Other use cases for referrals might be an internal referral to another person within your own multi-provider/ specialty clinic, and giving a recommendation to the patient to follow up directly with one of several specialists that you recommend.


Internal Referral

Generally, you would use a Referral Order for this. But you need not send the order outside of the clinic. Instead, you can send the order through the intra-office Chat feature to other staff member(s).


Referral Recommendation to the Patient

Sometimes, you may want to recommend multiple names of specialists to the patient, rather than sending the referral to a specific person. This would generally be done by using custom recommendations that you create under Admin > Manage > Alternate Plan Options. See Creating and Managing Alternate Plan Items.


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