Cardiology specialist referrals available directly through Unity

June 28, 2021

The introduction of Unity has brought about a sea of change in how we do our work. With recording patient data, careplans, ordering tests and medication and communicating with community health providers – the concept of a single source of truth is slowly becoming embedded.

One of the benefits of Unity is tracking and following up on inpatient referrals made between specialties, departments and teams within our Trust. This reduces our reliance on paper referrals, faxes and forms that can easily get lost in the system. Keeping all referrals in the patient’s record thereby reduces issues of miscommunication at handover.

Unity now has functionality that allows referrals to be viewed and actioned with a full auditable trail. This is called multi-practitioner task list (MPTL).

Today (Monday 28 June) Cardiology will begin trialling referrals to the Cardiology team using the ‘referral to’ order within Requests and Care plans. This will take you to a guidance page highlighting contact details for emergency referrals and other instructions related to specialised referrals. The next page will be a generic form to confirm the priority and free text boxes for the question being asked, relevant clinical details, name of referrer and consultant in charge. Duplicating items of medical information is no longer necessary as these are all freely available from any Unity system by any relevant clinician. However, the problem list and medication history will be pulled through automatically into the referral document.

In order to make best use of the referral system it is important to ensure all past medical history is documented in the Problem List and that medicines reconciliation is completed accurately to ensure all home and active medication is correctly displayed on the drug chart.

To find out how you can refer patients to Cardiology using the new Unity integrated referral system, please refer to the following QRG:

CD92 – Clinical Documentation – Inpatient Referral to Specialist Service