Lifepoint | Work at Manifold | Product design
Transforming referral workflows
in post-acute care
Post-Acute Care (PAC) providers play a critical role in ensuring seamless transitions from hospitals to rehabilitation and recovery environments. Quick referral responses are essential for increasing admissions and improving hospital metrics. However, they are increasingly burdened by challenges such as rising demand, staffing shortages, and operational inefficiencies. With hospitals experiencing longer lengths of stay due to limited PAC discharge options, higher acuity patients often remain in acute settings, further straining resources. To address these challenges, Manifold partnered with Lifepoint Health to develop LinQ, a comprehensive referral management solution. LinQ empowers PAC providers by streamlining referral workflows, improving data accuracy, and enabling faster responses to patient admissions.
Why Fast Referral Responses Matter
My Role
Product Designer
Tom Budzen (Product Manager)
Thommy Pappas (Product Manager)
Christopher Redman (Developer)
Gustavo Delgado (Developer)
Team
Timeline
Jan 2024 - June 2024
The Challenge
Inefficiencies in Referral Management
Traditional referral processes often rely on outdated methods such as manual data entry, faxes, and phone calls. These systems are prone to errors and inefficiencies, hindering PAC providers' ability to respond promptly and effectively to referral requests.
Through comprehensive interviews and shadowing sessions, we gained a deep understanding of their daily workflows, challenges, and priorities. This allowed us to identify key user groups and their specific needs, in order to create tailored and impactful solutions.
Understanding the users
Clinical Liaison
Needs 💡
Efficient documentation of referrals & updates post-PAS submission.
Challenges 💢
Managing referrals manually and through different channels
Medical Director
Needs 💡
Effective assessment of patient eligibility for rehabilitation.
Challenges 💢
Delay in accessing patient data for approval. Need concise details to make decisions.
Administrators/Leaders
Needs 💡
Real-time insights into referral trends and admission metrics.
Challenges 💢
Lack of a standardized visualization tool for operational data.
Our goal with the LinQ platform was to empower PAC providers to receive, review and respond to all referral activity in a single solution.
Goals
Receive
Review
Respond
Solution #1
Streamlined Referral Workflows
Incoming referrals are automatically tracked and monitored, reducing the risk of missed opportunities. This system enables Clinical Liaisons to stay on top of referral progress and ensures timely responses.
Solution #2
Collaborative Decision Support
Keeping track of each patient’s status. Automatically notifies Clinical Liaison when PAs is approved to ensuring they know to take the next steps immediately.
Solution #3
Qualification
Streamlined views provide the necessary details to approve or reject referrals quickly. Pre-populates qualification criteria for each patient based on the payer's specific rules to help Program & Medical Directors in approval decisions.
Outcome & Impact
The LinQ referral management system significantly impacted both PAC providers and hospitals. For PAC providers, it enabled faster referral responses, increased admissions, and improved operational efficiency by reducing manual tasks. Hospitals benefited from reduced average length of stay (ALOS), faster patient transitions, and enhanced trust in PAC providers, leading to better collaboration and patient flow.
50%
Reduction in referral processing times
35%
Increase in referral-to-admission conversion rate