Digital Referral Portal for Orthodontists

What's the Problem?

Over 500 orthodontist practices had the challenge of manually receiving patient referrals from their primary dentists. Digital patient referrals are instrumental in modernizing patient care systems by improving quality, efficiency, and accessibility. The lack of digital patient referrals made receiving and coordinating care difficult for orthodontic patients. Patients were forced to keep track of paper referrals to their time of visit. If the referrals were lost, orthodontic offices had to track down a new copy from the primary dentist before starting treatment.

What is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

Develop a digital patient referral portal prototype that enables in-network primary dentists to send referrals to in-network orthodontic doctors. This tool will sync with the company's practice management system to pull patient data. The referral will be printed for out-of-network orthodontic doctors.

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What Was Delivered?

Over the course of four sprints, we were able to launch the MVP, a digital patient referral portal that enabled primary dentists to send referrals to in-network providers. The doctor's information was synced daily into the portal using API calls to the provider database. Patient data was synced into the portal with the use of API calls to the organization's practice management system.

Doctors were able to add diagnosis codes, patient notes, insurance information, and any other documentation, such as X-rays. Once a patient was referred to an orthodontist, the office received an email notification that they received a new patient. Upon logging in, the office can see a dashboard view of incoming and/or outgoing patient referrals. The dashboard also enabled basic reporting for offices to track various metrics.

Following the initial launch, there were additional sprints to add enhancements, such as chat functionality for in-network provider offices. We also added status sections to track where patients were in their treatment. By working with the practice management system vendor, we were able to enable treatment documents to be automatically synced back to the patient's chart without manual intervention.

• During the initial launch, 57% of practices utilized the portal within the first 60 days.

• After 5 months, 91% of practices utilized the digital patient referral portal.

• In-network referrals increased 41%.