GP practices managing community referrals face a common challenge: multiple services, multiple forms, duplicated effort. When a single patient needs district nursing, physiotherapy and diabetes support, clinicians often complete three separate referrals with overlapping information manually re-entered each time.
It's inefficient, time-consuming, and creates unnecessary friction in what should be a straightforward process. DXS recently completed workflow improvements for two NHS organisations, designed to address exactly that challenge – one consolidating multiple community service referrals into a single streamlined pathway, the other automating clinical coding to reduce manual administrative work.
DXS recently completed the content delivery phase for a redesigned single referral workflow for Medway Community Healthcare, supporting multiple community services through one consolidated form.
Previously, clinicians referring patients to different community services within Medway had to navigate separate pathways, often re-entering the same patient and clinical information multiple times. The new solution brings those pathways together into a single, structured workflow with SMART functionality and auto-population features built in.
The result: clinicians complete one referral that routes appropriately to the relevant community service, with consistent data capture across all pathways. Patient demographics, medical history and clinical context are entered once and flow through to the receiving service without duplication or transcription errors.
The project is now progressing into the pilot phase ahead of wider rollout within the ICB.
DXS has also completed assessment and implementation work supporting automated EPaCCS passback functionality within a referral form for South and West Hertfordshire.
The enhancement enables automatic EPaCCS updates within clinical systems after a referral is completed. EPaCCS identifies patients receiving end-of-life care, ensuring their preferences are visible across all services. This automation supports PRC submissions and wider ICB integration requirements while ensuring critical information is consistently recorded. Previously, this had to be managed manually by clinicians or administrative teams – a time-consuming process that introduced potential for error and inconsistency.
Now, when a referral is submitted, the relevant information is automatically written back into the GP record. That supports better data quality for PRC submissions, reduces manual processing, and improves alignment with wider ICB workflows and integration requirements.
The content work is completing this month before progressing into user acceptance testing.
Both projects address the same underlying issue: administrative burden that pulls clinicians away from patient care. When referral processes require duplicate data entry, manual coding, or navigation across multiple disconnected forms, that's time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere.
Simplifying those workflows doesn't just make life easier for GP practices. It improves data quality, reduces errors, supports better integration across the care system, and ensures that the information reaching community and secondary care services is complete, consistent and usable.
As healthcare systems continue to evolve – with neighbourhood health models, integrated care pathways and increasing expectations around interoperability – referral workflows need to keep pace. These projects are part of DXS's ongoing work to deliver practical, user-focused improvements that support clinicians in day-to-day practice while strengthening the foundations for wider system integration.
Interested in how SMART Referrals can support smarter, more connected clinical workflows in your organisation? Get in touch – hello@dxs-systems.co.uk
