As Australia's first tertiary paediatric hospital network to implement digital referral management, with Sydney Children’s Hospital, Randwick and The Children’s Hospital at Westmead leading the effort to win back valuable time for clinicians and administrators.

Australian-found and operated digital platform Consultmed is now live across 90% of departments and services at both hospitals, significantly reducing time spent managing and processing patient referrals.Coinciding with the staged removal of fax-based communications, the transition to digital referrals has been a welcome change for hospital staff.

“The strongest voices in support of Consultmed have been our Administrative and Clinical staff”, said Dr Mary McCaskill, Director of Medical Services and Clinical Governance at Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network (SCHN).

“We’ve traditionally used the referral system like those used around New South Wale but using phone calls, faxes and letters was a slow process and it was difficult to tell where a referral has progressed to, both for the clinicians and the family.”

“Now, referrals are clearly identified when they arrive electronically, and patients are seen to swiftly."

"Referrals now take less time to organise, and everybody can keep track of where a referral is up to.”

McCaskill said the implementation of digital referral management services has met an array of needs at both sites.

“It’s been easy to implement, and there’s capacity to customise for each of our different clinics. This will be a game-changer for linking up children’s healthcare providers.”

The platform was founded three years ago and is already used by over 700 GP practices, 200 specialist clinics securely engaged with 4,000 clinicians across NSW Health.

Learn more about ConsultMed.