For many professions, funding bodies may require a referral for you and your patient to claim rebates for treatments and services. By quickly setting up referral details, you and your patients can stay on top of your coverage from funding bodies.
Enter your patient's referrals under their claim details, and Halaxy automatically manages and tracks them for you in appointments, invoices and reports.
Tip
You can run a referral report to see at a glance which patients have referrals about to expire. You can then run a campaign to notify patients that they need to renew their referral.
When you add a patient's referral, it is automatically used on any appointment that uses a fee under the relevant claim and funding body.
Example: You add a referral to a patient's Medicare claim details. Whenever you book that patient for an appointment with a Medicare fee, the referral is automatically linked and used for that appointment. This also adds the referral information to the invoice.
Referrals are always recorded under patient claims. After you have added a patient's claim details for a funding body, you can then add referral details.
Referral details can be quickly added in 3 areas. Select the tabs to learn more.
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Patient profile
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Open the patient profile and click the Funding tab.
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Under Claims & Referrals, open the relevant claim by clicking the
plus icon then click Add Referral. (You can add a new claim if you haven't yet.)
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Enter referral details, then click Save.
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Appointment
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First, create the appointment and save it.
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In the Appointment Information panel, click Add Referral.
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Enter referral details, then click Save.
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Invoice
When adding referral details, see this table as a guide for these referral form fields.
|
Detail |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Referral Type (optional) |
Select a referral type. A referral type is a template for referrals you frequently use for particular funding bodies. If you are not using referral types, you can leave this blank. Selecting a referral type automatically fills out the referral length, limit and coverage. Halaxy provides preset referral types that you can import, or you can create your own. Tip: Using referral types automates your workflow. You can link a referral type to specific fees, which means patient referral information automatically appears for their appointments booked only for the specified fees. Related article: Guide to referral types |
|
Referrer |
Enter the name of the referring practitioner. If the referring practitioner is already listed in your Professional Contacts list, select their name in the dropdown. If not, add them as a new professional contact. |
|
Limit |
Enter the referral limit. You can select appointments, hours or minutes. If the referral does not limit the number of appointments, hours or minutes, leave this field blank. Halaxy automatically tracks the number of appointments made in Halaxy under the referral for you. |
|
Add prior appointments (optional) |
If applicable, click Add prior appointments to enter the number of appointments under the referral (with you or with another practitioner) before you added the referral to the patient claim details. Halaxy tracks the number of appointments made under the referral, and automatically deducts the prior appointments entered. |
|
Date |
Enter the date of the referral. |
|
Expiry Date (optional) |
The expiry date is automatically calculated for you based on the referral type and the referral date you entered. If expiry date does not calculate, enter the date on which the referral expires. If there is no expiry date, leave this blank. |
|
Value Limit (optional) |
Enter the monetary value limit for treatment costs covered by the referral. Example: If the referral covers $2000 in treatment costs, enter $2000 as the value limit. You can also specify whether the value limit covers only appointment fees or all fees (which may include appointments, products, travel and other fees). |
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Include cancelled appointments (optional) |
Tick this checkbox to make cancelled appointments count towards the limit. You can always unlink the appointment from the referral if you do not want it to count. |
|
Recipient |
Select the receiving practitioner for the referral. By not selecting a specific practitioner, the referral applies to all practitioners in your practice. |
|
Status |
Select the status of the referral.
This setting must be enabled for use. |
|
Priority |
Mark a referral as preferred, allowing you to automatically select an older referral for appointments if it has not yet reached its appointment or value limit. If multiple or no referrals are marked preferred, the default selection applies where the most recently added valid referral is used in appointments. This setting must be enabled for use. |
If you don't want a specific appointment to count under a referral, you can remove the referral in the appointment invoice.
To do this, follow the steps below.
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Open the patient profile and click the Funding tab.
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Under the claim, next to the referral, click the
bin icon.
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In the pop-up, click Delete.
Note
You cannot delete a referral if it is linked to appointments with existing invoices or clinical notes. To delete the referral, you can remove the it from the appointments (see previous section), or you can delete the linked appointments, invoices or clinical notes.
Caution
Deleting a referral cannot be undone.
In addition to be able to link fees and clinical templates (such as referral acceptance letters) to specific referral types, you can also attach files to individual referrals. This is useful if you need to include additional documentation.
Because referrals are treated as clinical notes, you can attach files using the same method as attaching files to clinical notes.
Hover your cursor over a referral in the appointment information panel, on an invoice or on the patient's Funding page to see how many appointments a patient has had in the current calendar year and in previous calendar years. This displays any appointments with a fee under the same funder (for example, any appointment with a Medicare fee).
GIF: Hovering over a referral to see appointments in a calendar year
Aside from the Funding page, every referral is also added to the patient record as a clinical note.
To access this, open the patient profile and click the Clinical Notes tab.
When you view the referral in the patient's clinical notes, you can:
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View and edit the referral details
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View all appointments linked to the referral
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Add new notes linked to the referral
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Link (and unlink) clinical notes and templates to the referral
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Add files to the referral
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