Overview#
Many ambulance contacts do not end when the crew leaves the scene. A frailty patient may need a rapid home follow-up, a COPD patient may need community monitoring, and a palliative patient may need structured support rather than a return to the emergency department. If that referral is captured outside the encounter, continuity depends on re-entry and follow-up calls.
The ePCR Community Paramedic Referrals module lets crews raise that referral directly from the active encounter, select the most appropriate programme, record the clinical reason, set urgency, and hand the case into the follow-up workflow without breaking the encounter. It gives services a structured bridge between scene care and planned community follow-up.
Last Reviewed: 2026-04-17 Last Updated: 2026-04-17
Key Features#
- Programme-Based Referral: Route referrals into structured programmes such as heart failure, COPD, complex diabetes, frailty, or palliative support.
- Encounter-Linked Referral: Keep the referral tied to the originating patient encounter rather than treating it as a separate admin record.
- Clinical Reason Capture: Record why the patient is being referred in operationally useful terms.
- Urgency Handling: Distinguish between routine, urgent, and immediate follow-up needs.
- Offline-Tolerant Submission: Preserve the referral workflow even when field connectivity is poor.
- First-Visit Handover: Pass the referral into the follow-up workflow so the community team can schedule and act on it.
Use Cases#
- Frailty Follow-Up: A crew attends an older adult after a fall and refers them for community follow-up rather than defaulting to repeated emergency transport.
- COPD and Heart-Failure Monitoring: A patient who does not need immediate admission is referred into a structured home-monitoring programme.
- Palliative Support: A palliative patient is routed into a follow-up pathway with the right urgency and context.
- Chronic Disease Step-Down: The service uses scene-based referral to reduce avoidable recontacts and improve continuity.
Integration#
- Electronic Patient Care Report Clinical Workspace: Referrals are raised directly from the encounter context.
- Home Visit Workflows: Submitted referrals feed the assigned-visit workflow used by the community team.
- Clinical Governance and Audit: Referral activity can be reviewed alongside the originating encounter and later outcomes.
- Mobile Responder Workflows: Field users can submit referrals from the mobile interface rather than waiting to return to station.
Open Standards#
- HL7 FHIR ServiceRequest: community follow-up referrals can align with the standard healthcare request pattern.
- HL7 FHIR CarePlan: follow-up activity can align with a standard representation of planned ongoing care.
- HL7 FHIR Task: scheduled follow-up work can align with a standard task-oriented workflow model.
- SNOMED CT: referral reasons and programme context can align with structured clinical terminology where required.
- ISO 8601: referral and scheduling timestamps use a standard date-time representation.