FAQ: Building a Referral Network for Your OHT

Clients referred across a Caredove eRequest or eRefer always know who is helping them, and when. This reduces confusion for clients and clinicians alike. 

OHTs are a perfect example of a network where streamlined transitions are important. They are organizations working together to solve hard navigational problems. When they create a Caredove network, they have assembled a trusted collection of local services. These services can then be promoted in various health care channels including referring clinical information systems like Ocean or CHRIS, public OHT websites, and within Caredove, available to any qualified referrer already using Caredove to send or receive referrals.

Yes, in fact, many organizations today exist in several different Caredove networks or regional initiatives. An organization’s services will instantly appear in any Ontario Health Team or regional network they are a part of, allowing them to receive referrals in their single, secure Caredove eReferral inbox, now from more entry points.

Each organization has the ability to add and edit their own services within the Caredove platform. The Caredove team will help organizations clearly communicate each of their services within our taxonomy of home and community care categories. Network leadership can also support in editing or updating service listings, as needed.

Start by promoting the lowest barrier services with the highest coverage across the region, like Meals on Wheels or Walk-In Counselling, and working your way up to services of higher intensity that require a more complicated intake process. This helps you achieve some quick wins by tackling the low-hanging fruit early, making you a Caredove expert while we streamline more complicated workflows down the road.

Every regional rollout looks different, and we can help you promote any group of services your OHT wants to prioritize in Years 1 and 2.

If organizations have overlapping boundaries, all relevant results will show up when a client enters an address in the search site. This will give clients the option to choose which organization they prefer. It’s important for organizations to update their service information within the Caredove system so your OHT is promoting accurate services with current availability and the languages in which service is delivered.

Caredove’s reporting module covers most metrics required by funders and managers, including Online Appointment Booking analytics. Organizations can run a report on the number of booked appointments within a certain time period. 

All referral metadata can be exported into a spreadsheet to track referral outcomes and specific demographic information, which is important for Patient Navigation Specialists who are monitoring activity across the entire OHT network.

Caredove is fully PHIPA, PIPEDA and HIPAA compliant, and has SOC 2 Type II certification, meeting all Canadian and American health care privacy standards. Our servers are hosted by AWS in Montreal, so data entered into Caredove never leaves Canada. More information is available at caredove.com/legal.

Yes! Organizations can send referrals to other organizations within the Caredove system. You can even send referrals to organizations in other networks, like nearby OHTs and other regional initiatives. The Caredove team will help curate the “dashboard” of every organization so that they can search & refer to relevant initiatives based on their region and role.

Logged in users can track their sent referrals in their Caredove Outbox. The sending organization will receive updates on the referral outcome, closing the loop on the client’s care status. This is also true for clinicians sending referrals from external systems, like OCEAN or CHRIS.

The last thing organizations want is more time away from providing direct care. The platform is extremely intuitive and easy to use. 95% of staff new to sending referrals require no extra training. If they know how to book a hotel online, they can send a referral in Caredove. 

Staff who receive referrals can be trained in under an hour. They will learn to update their services, create intake appointments and update referral statuses. 

Organizations can instantly update their service information and appointment availability at any time. You can quickly suspend your service if you are at capacity, or update your service with waitlist times. 

Organization training sessions are conducted via Zoom, and can be recorded for staff members that are unable to attend.

No! In fact, for every 10 referrals that start with a booked appointment, intake staff will save roughly 4 hours of time, and phone tag will be reduced to almost zero. Our online appointment booking and reminder tools can also reduce no shows and missed appointments by up to 10%, compared to other online booking software.

Caredove has an instant chat feature available to any user logged onto the platform. Our Operations team (real humans!) responds in under 5 minutes during regular business hours. They get to know each organization receiving referrals, personally. 

For after-hours support, Caredove has a suite of tutorials to help users perform any activity on the platform.

Caredove understands that every organization has a unique workflow and requires different information to conduct successful intake appointments. Caredove can help handle child and youth referrals with customized eligibility, intake forms and multiple types of parent/guardian consent that are unique for youth intake processes.

Caredove has an open API (Application Programming Interface) which allows Caredove to send client data directly into another system, for example, a Case Management System (CMS) like AlayaCare or EMHWare. We have active integrations with many systems and are happy to speak to any digital health vendor who wants to integrate with us.

Caredove also has a quick-action copy and paste button to copy client data directly to any organization’s client information system. This can be a helpful workaround before a true technical integration is complete, saving your staff time.

Caredove handles this so that you don't need a separate agreement. Gone are the days of driving around to organizations to sign a multi-organization agreement. Our platform builds in all the legal requirements for referral data sharing to make your legal review efficient and cost effective.

When an organization’s staff registers their account on the Caredove platform, they agree to the platform-wide Terms & Conditions, and the Roles & Responsibilities based on their permissions within the platform. This is a legal agreement to safely handle client data that makes other referral data sharing agreements redundant. Learn more at caredove.com/legal.

Caredove is software as a service, with sophisticated infrastructure, integrations to other systems and near real-time support to users. We sustain the platform through an annual license fee. The fee is driven by the number of organizations in the Caredove network. 

A trusted service collection of 30 community based organizations, which can transact unlimited referrals, costs less than one administrative support personnel. 

Contact us to receive a custom proposal based on your OHT’s needs.

Organizations that participate in a network are able to access all of Caredove’s CBO Essentials features at no cost. This includes 7-day data retention, 5 Premium Users, core referral forms and the ability to receive unlimited referrals from clinicians and the public.

Individual organizations can optionally upgrade to a Caredove CBO Advanced subscription to further streamline intake processes across their organization (extended data retention, advanced form library, Outlook, Teams, and Zoom integrations, SMS reminders, central intake functionality, etc).