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OutSmart Guide

Patient Referral Tool

The Patient Referral Tool lets practitioners create referral letters for patients without leaving OutSmart. Referrals connect a patient with another healthcare provider for consultation or further investigation, and they are stored alongside the patient’s other documents once finalized. An optional AI assist can draft the letter from the patient’s medical records, which you then review and refine.

Opening the Referral Editor

  1. Open the Patient Workspace for the patient. Search for the patient in the top search bar and click the Patient Workspace button on the result.
  2. In the Patient Workspace toolbar, click the referral icon — a practitioner figure with an arrow.
  3. The Referral Editor opens in a panel with fields for patient details, recipient details, and the referral letter itself.

Auto-Filled Fields

When the editor opens:

  • Date defaults to today. You can change it.
  • Patient is pre-filled from the workspace you started in. You can change it if needed.

Choosing a Recipient

Pick the recipient from the Contact dropdown. This list uses the same address book as the fax system, so any contact you’ve added for faxing is available here too.

If the recipient isn’t in your address book yet, add them as a new contact from the same dropdown — once added, they’re available for future referrals and faxes.

Using the AI Assist (Optional)

An orange AI panel at the top of the editor offers optional AI drafting. Using it is entirely optional — you can ignore the panel and write the letter from scratch in the editor below.

To use the AI assist:

  1. Type a short guidance line into the AI panel. For example: “Patient experiences frequent headaches, requesting neurologist input.”
  2. Click the generate button.
  3. The AI combines your guidance with the patient’s medical records and produces a draft referral letter in the editor below.
  4. Review the draft. Edit it, expand it, trim it, or rewrite parts as needed.

The AI uses the patient’s records to make the draft specific, so the more relevant context exists in the patient’s chart history, the better the draft.

Writing the Letter Manually

If you’d rather write the letter from scratch:

  • Skip the AI panel and start typing in the letter editor at the bottom of the Referral Editor.

You can also start with an AI draft and rewrite it entirely if the draft didn’t capture what you wanted.

Adding Your Signature

  • If your account already has a saved signature, it’s applied automatically. You can replace it for this referral if needed.
  • If you don’t have a saved signature yet, you can upload an image of one or draw one directly with a stylus or mouse. The signature can be saved to your account for future use.

Saving, Previewing, and Finalizing

Three actions live at the top right of the Referral Editor:

ActionWhat it does
Save DraftSaves the in-progress referral. Drafts appear in the Documents tab of the Patient Workspace and can be reopened and edited later.
PreviewShows the referral as it will appear in letter format, with the clinic header, patient and recipient details, letter body, and signature.
FinalizeGenerates the finished referral as a PDF and files it in the patient’s documents. Finalized referrals cannot be edited — finalize only when the letter is ready to send.

Finalized PDFs include:

  • The clinic header and logo
  • The date, patient details, and recipient details
  • The letter content
  • The practitioner’s signature

Once finalized, the referral lives in the patient’s documents and can be shared, faxed, or emailed like any other document.

Managing Draft Referrals

Drafts appear in the Documents tab of the Patient Workspace until they’re finalized.

For each draft you can:

  • Edit — reopen the Referral Editor and continue working.
  • Delete — remove the draft if it’s no longer needed.

To finalize a draft, click Edit, review the letter, then click Finalize at the top right of the editor.

What Admin Staff Can Do

Admin staff cannot create or finalize referrals — only practitioners can. Admins can:

  • See draft referrals created by practitioners, listed in the patient’s Documents tab.
  • Click Preview on a draft to view it.
  • See finalized referrals as PDFs in the patient’s documents, and fax, email, or share them like any other patient document.

The distinction protects the clinical authorship of the referral while still letting admin staff handle distribution once a practitioner has signed off.