Quality referrals

Key Points

• Describes the appraisal of a standardised proforma used by practitioners to refer patients to the Periodontal Department of a teaching hospital.

• Suggests that the use of such a proforma may guide the referring practitioner into providing the details required by the receiving clinician.

• Reports that a higher percentage of acceptable referral communications appeared to result when the proforma, rather than a traditional referral letter was used.

Abstract

Aim

The primary objective was to assess the standard of new-patient referral communications to the Periodontology Department of a teaching hospital and evaluate any differences in referral quality between referrals that used a standardised proforma and conventional letters. Secondary objectives were to evaluate the potential influence on referral performance of age, postgraduate qualifications and country of qualification of the referring practitioners.

Design

A retrospective analysis of a randomised sample of all referral letters and proformae received during a nine-month period.

Setting

Letters and referral proformae received by the Periodontal Department of the teaching hospital between 1 January and 30 September 1995 were surveyed.

Methods

An objective Categorisation System for Periodontal Referral Quality (CSPRQ) was devised and tested for inter- and intra-examiner reproducibility. The referral communications in the random sample were then categorised for quality. The year, country of qualification (UK or non-UK) and possession or otherwise of postgraduate qualifications for each of the referring dentists was ascertained from the Dentists' Register. A Standard Normal Deviants (SND), or Z-test was applied to the resulting data.

Outcome measures

Acceptability or unacceptability of referral letters and proformae, related to the age (assessed by year of qualification), country of qualification and possession or otherwise of postgraduate qualifications.

Results

A random sample of 378 referral communications (from a total of 2663) was analysed. Sixty-three of the random sample were referral proformae. The use of the referral proforma was associated with a highly significantly better (P<0.01) referral performance, than the use of referral letters. There was a trend for referrals from the small numbers of practitioners who were Fellows in Dental Surgery or Masters of Science to be better than those from other practitioners. There was also a trend for use of the referral proforma to enhance the referral performance of practitioners who had been qualified for more than 20 years. Use of the referral proforma highly significantly (P<0.01) improved the quality of referrals from non-UK qualified practitioners.

Conclusions

In this study, the quality of periodontal referrals was associated for the better with the use of a referral proforma.

Log in or create a free account to read this content

Gain free access to this article, as well as selected content from this journal and more on nature.com

Access through your institution

or

Sign in or create an account

Continue with Google

Continue with ORCiD