How to Organize and Consolidate All of Your Referral Sources
When a new patient is referred to your office by an existing patient, it's best to enter the referring patient's name into the Practice Management System (PMS). The PMS will recognize this as an internal referral, eliminating the need to manually add that patient name as a separate referral source. In a referral source report, each unique patient name will be listed as its own category instead of being grouped under a generic "internal referral" label. Consequently, when Practice by Numbers (PbN) syncs with your PMS data over a long period, you might see a large distribution of categories on the Patient Flow dashboard.
To make this data more manageable and insightful, you can now consolidate and organize these referral sources in the Practice by Numbers settings.
Steps to Consolidate Referral Sources
1. Navigate to the Settings Page: Go to the Settings - Referral Sources page in Practice by Numbers. You might find a long list of referral sources, including individual patient names.
2. Consolidate Patient Names: Consolidating patient names into an "Internal" category doesn’t mean losing track of who referred whom. It simply means categorizing them for better visualization and analysis. For example, names of referring doctors and specialty clinics can be grouped under a "Dr. and Clinic Referrals" category that you create.
3. Assign Names to Categories:
Identify the category where you want to place the referral sources or names.
For patient names, click the button to the right of the pencil-shaped icon next to each name.
A drop-down menu will appear listing all unmapped referral sources. Select the names you wish to categorize under "Internal".
4. Create New Categories if Needed:
If you don’t have a suitable existing category, you can add a new referral source category by selecting "Add Referral Source" at the top of the screen.
Referrals from specialists or other clinics can be grouped under a "Doctors and Clinics" category, for instance.
5. Streamline the Drop-Down Menu:
The drop-down menu will only display referral sources that haven't been categorized yet. This prevents the need to scroll through a lengthy list of already consolidated names.