What is a Transfer Center?

A Transfer Center (sometimes called a referral center) is an office in a hospital facility that is charged with coordinating all requests to admit patients from another hospital that is currently unable to provide the patient with the appropriate level of care. It can also easily handle direct admissions from the local physician community.   Transfer centers typically provide a single phone number for inbound calls, capture patient medical and demographic information, facilitate the call between the referring and admitting physician, and handle post-admit processes such as bed requesting, registration and transportation.

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What does the Transfer Center software do?

The Transfer Center software provides a system for hospitals to:

  • Manage inbound referral cases as they come into the transfer center, including direct admissions
  • Capture patient demographic, medical history, and referring facility/physician information
  • Record critical timestamps and milestones in the referral process
  • Provide post-referral reporting and analytics to measure transfer center performance  

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What are the major features/functions of the Transfer Center software?

The Transfer Center application includes:

  • An active work-list of all open transfer requests/cases
  • One-click creation of a new referral case
  • Ability to manage multiple open referrals simultaneously
  • Intake forms to capture patient demographic and medical information, referring facility information, reasons for transfer request, and requested service
  • A facility for recording referring and admitting physician information
  • An ability to timestamp important communication milestones including time of request, when physician has been paged or re-paged, when physician returned call, and when referring and admitting physicians spoke
  • A screen to capture final disposition of transfer case including assigned Unit, Bed and/or Service if patient admitted
  • Robust set of standard reports
  • Custom reporting tool

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How does the new TransferCenter™ software fit in with other TeleTracking patient flow solutions?

Currently, TeleTracking offers the TransferCenter™ software as a stand-alone solution helping to streamline, measure and automate the functions of a transfer/ referral center within a hospital.  An interface is currently being developed so clients will have the ability to generate bed requests and make assignments from within the TransferCenter™ software, linking it directly to the current version of PreAdmitTracking® with the electronic bedboard® powered by TeleTracking XT™ for ease in placement.

In keeping with TeleTracking’s system-wide, transparent approach to patient flow automation, however, we will continue to develop and integrate all of our solutions onto the industry’s only enterprise-class patient flow platform, TeleTracking XT, including TransferCenter™.

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Is an Avanti consulting engagement required for a client to purchase Transfer Center?

No, however like our Capacity Management Solutions, TeleTracking takes a holistic, enterprise-wide approach at patient flow, ensuring that both processes and technology are in place to obtain optimal results.   For clients who are just beginning to evaluate implementing a Transfer Center, we strongly recommend an initial Avanti assessment, in addition to the software application.

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