Design and development of a medical specialist referral system for the indigent population in Richmond

To help those that are unable to afford medical insurance, free medical clinics have been established throughout the country. In Richmond. Virginia there are fourteen safety-net healthcare clinics that serve the general needs of indigent patients. The current referral procedure relies on the clinic's ability to find an appropriate specialist through favors and acquaintances, which is unorganized and inefficient. To solve this problem we designed a secure, user-friendly electronic referral system for use by all fourteen clinics. This system matches patients to specialists based on several clinic inputs, allows the clinics to record appointments made with specialists, and provides reports that display statistics on the clinics and specialists themselves. We designed the system in three tiers to ensure its integration and acceptance into the Richmond community. The final product sees the convergence of several e-health processes into one system. Lack of health insurance hinders millions of Americans from receiving adequate specialist health care. In addition, shortcomings in the current medical referral system reduce the timely care that patients need. These factors adversely affect the patient's health, family members, livelihood, and community. Our team designed an electronic medical referral system for the indigent population in Richmond, Virginia, which facilitate specialist health care for the uninsured and underinsured. This paper discusses the rationale and impact of this project, the design of the referral system, and the current implementation of it.