Referral Management
Praxi tracks client referrals from GPs, psychiatrists, and other referring professionals. You can record referral details, monitor expiry dates, and generate reports on referral sources.
Adding a Referral
- Open the client's profile
- Go to the Profile tab and expand Referrals
- Click Add Referral
- Enter the referral details:
- Referral source -- Healthcare (GP, psychiatrist, paediatrician, hospital), courts (family law, criminal, federal circuit, magistrates, county, supreme), legal (solicitor, barrister, legal firm, Legal Aid), government agencies (child protection, corrections, youth justice, NDIS, WorkSafe, TAC), insurance (WorkCover, TAC, private, other), or other (self-referral, family member, school, employer)
- Referrer name and organisation
- Referral date -- When the referral was issued
- Referral reason -- The reason for referral or provisional diagnosis
- Urgency -- Routine, non-urgent, urgent within 2 weeks, urgent within 1 week, or urgent within 24 hours
- Funding source -- The associated funding source (if applicable)
- Referral direction -- Incoming (received) or outgoing (sent to another provider)
- SLA response days -- Custom response deadline in days (optional)
- Legal/forensic fields (when applicable) -- Legal matter type, case number, court name, solicitor details, opposing solicitor
- Upload the referral letter if available (PDF, image, or scanned document)
- Click Save
Referrals can also be submitted through the Referrer Portal by external professionals such as GPs and NDIS planners.
When creating an appointment, you can add or link a referral directly from the appointment form. This ensures the referral is associated with the correct session count.
Tracking Referral Status
Each referral displays its current status:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending Review | Referral received, awaiting team review |
| Accepted | Referral accepted, client being onboarded |
| Declined | Referral declined (with reason provided to referrer) |
| In Progress | Treatment is underway |
| Report Pending | Progress report or assessment is due |
| Report Submitted | Report has been sent to the referrer |
| Completed | Referral fully completed |
| On Hold | Temporarily paused |
| Waitlisted | Client added to the practice waitlist |
| Cancelled | Referral cancelled by referrer or practice |
Praxi alerts you when a referral is approaching expiry so you can request a renewal from the referring professional.
Referral Expiry and Medicare Rules
Medicare Mental Health Treatment Plans follow specific referral rules:
- An initial referral covers 6 sessions
- After a GP review, an additional 4 sessions may be approved (10 total per calendar year)
- Referrals are valid for 12 months from the date of issue
- A new referral is required each calendar year
Praxi tracks these automatically and warns practitioners when a client is nearing their session limit or referral expiry.
Referral rules vary by funding source. NDIS plans have their own approval periods, DVA referrals follow different guidelines, and EAP referrals are managed per the employer's contract. Configure funding-specific referral rules in Settings > Billing.
Referral SLA Monitoring
Praxi monitors response time targets for each referral. You can set a custom response deadline (in days) when adding a referral using the SLA response days field. Praxi alerts you when an SLA is approaching breach so your team can respond promptly.
Check for upcoming SLA breaches from the referral dashboard using the Check SLA Breaches action, or let the automated SLA monitoring job alert your team.
GP Referral Letters and Progress Reports
Praxi helps you communicate with referring professionals:
- Acknowledge receipt -- Send an automatic acknowledgement to the GP when you accept a referral
- Progress reports -- Generate and send progress reports to the referring professional at defined intervals. Link a referral to an MHCP for integrated tracking.
- Discharge summaries -- When treatment concludes, send a discharge summary back to the referrer
To configure automatic referrer communications, go to Settings > Communications.
Waitlist Conversion
If your practice has no immediate availability, you can convert a referral directly to a waitlist entry. This links the referral to the client's waitlist record so you can track progress from referral through to first appointment.
Referral Reporting
Access referral analytics from Reports > Referral Sources to view:
- Top referrers -- Which GPs and professionals refer the most clients
- Revenue by funding source -- Revenue breakdown by referral funding type
- Quality rating -- Referral quality metrics per referrer
- Referrer details -- Drill down into individual referrer statistics
- Trends -- Referral volume and conversion trends over time
These reports help you maintain strong referrer relationships and identify opportunities for outreach.