Referral Triage Optimisation for a UK Care Provider

Business Context

The organisation managed complex referral volumes across multiple service lines. Existing triage processes relied heavily on manual review and inconsistent formatting of referral notes, limiting throughput and quality control.

Core Challenges

1. High referral variance in detail and quality.
2. Delays in identifying urgent versus routine pathways.
3. Limited operational transparency across referral stages.

Delivery Approach

1. Referral-text standardisation and structured extraction.
2. AI-assisted urgency and complexity scoring with clinician oversight.
3. Automated queue routing and status tracking across care teams.

Implementation Timeline

• Weeks 1-3: Baseline analysis, triage criteria mapping, governance sign-off.
• Weeks 4-7: Data and workflow build, queue logic, escalation controls.
• Weeks 8-9: Pilot in two care pathways.
• Weeks 10-11: Rollout and quality-review cadence launch.

Operational Outcomes

Care coordinators gained faster visibility into priority referrals while preserving clinician accountability. Management teams improved resource planning through clearer demand and queue analytics.

Next-Phase Roadmap

Next phase includes patient communication automation and capacity-aware scheduling recommendations.