As I’ve pointed out before, referrals is a complicated workflow in healthcare. But it’s important nevertheless because it affects transition points in a patients care continuum, in turn affecting outcomes and cost.
Par8o was founded by the same guys who started Sermo (the online physician community that had the distinct honor of being the first review on Multiplyd 🙂 ). It’s a referral management platform for physicians and their staff. Basic participation features like send/receive referrals, adding staff is free. For $80.20/month, the premium account will enable prominent placement in search results, personalization (availability, insurance accepted, etc.).
The recent rise of startups focused on referrals indicates another failure point in the conventional EHR world. Why, one wonders, is this not just a feature of the EHR installed in the PCP and specialists’ office? Or a service provided by the regional Health Information Exchange (HIE)? Having yet another place to log in, figure out, and use is a detriment for the average physician who is time-strapped. Other headwinds exist. ONC‘s push for Direct Project based secure messaging may start creating a genuinely untethered (from EHRs) way for physicians to connect with each other. Competing with the current fax, phone system of referral is not easy either. They may be ugly and inefficient, but they are there. With established workflows and staff familiarity.
The gold at the end of referral management rainbow lies in two pots: Analytics and Provider Directory. The former provides overarching insight that has never truly existed thus far. Local referral patterns can be extremely useful for an organization (or an incoming independent provider) that is trying to grow roots in a given geographical region. Interesting side note: Fred Trotter is trying to figure this out by mining medicare data. Another example can be a referral leakage report that points out which kinds of patients are being referred out of the network and to whom are worth their virtual weight in gold for an aspiring ACO or an existing IDS.
Provider Directory is a comprehensive, up-to-date list of verified providers that includes, amongst other attributes, a secure digital way of reaching them. That may sound as simple as the yellow pages, but it’s not. The ideal Provider Directory that spans geographies is a great monetizable asset since any vendor who wants to sell something to those providers needs a valid, secure digital way to on-board and reach them. Not to mention the benefits to patient care when all providers can communicate with each other, irrespective of their bonding to the default EHR system.
Although referral management natively fits in EHRs functional spectrum, EHR vendors are most probably not going to get there fast enough or do a good enough job once they do. So there is definitely room for a dedicated referral management solution today. Since this is a network play, my money would be on a team that has created large viable physician networks before. Par8o (Sermo DNA) , Doximity (ePocrates DNA) both fit the bill.