26+ years of expertise in aligning common industry needs

Over the past two decades, hospitals and health care systems have continuously evolved to meet their patient’s changing needs, increasingly incorporating digital technologies into various functional areas. In today’s digitized healthcare environment, there remains an immense opportunity to utilize medical data both efficiently and compliantly, to further optimize experiences and outcomes for patients. 

The exponential growth of the quantity of data available from a variety of sources, such as electronic medical records and image databases, can make it difficult to streamline information and enable health care professionals to enhance standards of care. 

At Symcor, helping our clients through their digital transformation is at the core of everything we do. As a sponsor of Women’s College Hospital’s (WCH) Virtual Care program and long-time supporter of the organization, Symcor partnered with WCH to better understand how digital capabilities are currently being used to transform healthcare, and how Symcor could bring its expertise to further optimize current processes. 

WCH was looking for ways to leverage their current digital technology to create a referral solution that was more efficient and accurate, to better serve their patients. Together, Symcor and WCH identified key opportunities to leverage digital capabilities that improve or eradicate some of the pain points in WCH’s Referral Management Process: 

• Creating consistency in quality & format of inbound referrals
• Reducing excessive manual data entry & investigation
• Improving scheduling & appointment reminders 
• Reducing the amount of paper used and shared between departments
• Standardizing processes including patient onboarding & triaging

Symcor’s Recommendations:

1. Digitize the referral process using WCH’s existing tools & technology:

• Enable remote access to the triaging process 
• Consolidate triage decisions to reduce wait times for specific specialists 
• Increase productivity by eliminating manual processes 

2. Automate notifications & scheduling

• Increased communication to enhance experience for both patients and physicians
• Reduce “No Show” appointments 

3. Provide digital referral options

• Reduce handwritten entries from physicians to decrease occurrence of missing or illegible information
• Complete triage through the Health Information System 

4. Provide status & productivity dashboards

• Encourage performance improvements by publishing productivity statistics and referral status

WCH recently completed a pilot to operationalize Symcor’s recommendations which resulted in considerable enhancements to the WCH Referral Management Process, including a 70% improvement in average response time to referrals.  

To learn more about this initiative, contact us here.

About Symcor

Symcor enables secure data exchanges and supporting business processes to help clients succeed in an evolving digital world. Trusted by Canada's largest industries for over 25 years to support their digital transformations, Symcor aligns industry participants to solve common challenges most effectively and efficiently.
For more information, visit  Symcor

About Women’s College Hospital

For more than 100 years Women’s College Hospital (WCH) has been developing revolutionary advances in healthcare. Today, WCH is a world leader in the health of women and Canada’s leading, academic ambulatory hospital. A champion of health equity, WCH advocates for the health of all women from diverse cultures and backgrounds and ensures their needs are reflected in the care they receive. It focuses on delivering innovative solutions that address Canada’s most pressing issues related to population health, patient experience and system costs. 
For more information, visit: www.womenscollegehospital.ca