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Fix or cancel a referral after sending

A sent referral can be corrected without re-sending or duplicating it, and everyone who already has it is told what changed. One that should not have gone out can be withdrawn. Here is what Update details fixes, what happens to the patient link, how withdrawing works and what it cannot undo, and how to download or print a referral as a PDF.

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What can change, and what cannot

Most of a referral's content can be corrected after sending. The patient's first and last name, date of birth, email, and phone; the notes; the reason codes; and the clinical context, whether that is a tooth chart, animal details, or risk factors. Corrections work on archived referrals and on booked ones.

The rest is fixed the moment you send. The recipients, the referral type, the category and specialty, and the referral's status cannot be edited, and a referral cannot be deleted or unsent. If it should not have gone out, withdraw it. Once a referral has reached a practice, that disclosure has happened and nothing undoes it. The fields you cannot change are left out of the correction sheet rather than shown grayed.

Some of it is a clinician's to change. Where your practice requires a clinician to send referrals, somebody who is not one keeps the patient and contact details, and on a veterinary referral the owner's information and the animal details. The reasons, the notes, and the clinical context are left out of their sheet, with a line in their place saying a clinician makes those changes. See Send a referral for clinician review.

Correct a referral

  1. In the sidebar, open Referrals.
  2. Select the Sent tab.
  3. Open the referral that needs fixing.
  4. To the right of the patient's name, select Update details.
  5. Change the fields that are wrong. The sheet holds the patient details, the reasons, the notes, and the clinical context, and nothing else.
  6. Select Review changes.
  7. Read the before and after of every change. Only what is listed will change.
  8. If you changed the patient's name or date of birth, confirm the attestation: This is the same patient. I'm fixing an error in their information.
  9. Select Save changes.
The Update details sheet open over a sent referral, explaining that it fixes patient or contact details, reasons, notes, and clinical context, and that locked fields stay as they were sent. It holds the patient details, the reason chips, the notes, and the clinical context, with a footer offering Cancel and Review changes.
The correction sheet. The fields that cannot change are left out, not grayed.
The review stage of the Update details sheet after correcting the patient surname. One row names the last name field and shows the old surname, an arrow, and the corrected one, above a required attestation checkbox reading that this is the same patient and the sender is fixing an error in their information, with a note that it is required when the name or date of birth changes because a different person needs a new referral.
The review stage after a name change, with the attestation it requires.

The attestation is required before a change to the name or date of birth will save, because a correction and a swap to a different patient look the same on a form.

If a colleague corrected the same referral while your sheet was open, your save is refused rather than overwriting theirs. Everything you typed stays on screen; refresh the referral and save again on top of their version.

Review changes stays disabled until something differs from what was sent.

What the other side sees

A correction is not a quiet edit. Each receiving practice that can already see the referral gets a Referral updated banner listing the before and after of what they have not yet seen, and the change is recorded in the referral's history. The actor is shown as the referring practice, never a named person. A Choice recipient the patient shared with later sees only corrections made from their own disclosure onward.

The referral is never re-sent and never duplicated: everyone keeps working the same referral, now with the right details.

Withdraw a referral

When the mistake is one the correction sheet cannot reach, usually the wrong recipient, the wrong patient, or a referral that should never have gone out, withdraw the referral. The patient's link and every receiving practice's access stop working, and nothing more is sent about it. Your practice keeps the referral and its history. Booked and archived referrals can be withdrawn too.

Withdrawing can't be undone, and it can't take back what someone already saw or downloaded. To refer the patient again, create a new referral.

  1. In the sidebar, open Referrals.
  2. Select the Sent tab.
  3. Open the referral.
  4. To the right of the patient's name, open the ... menu.
  5. Select Withdraw referral, the last item.
  6. To take it off your Sent list as well, check Also archive referral.
  7. In the Withdraw this referral? dialog, select Withdraw referral to confirm.
The overflow menu open on a sent referral, offering Resend link, Print, and Archive, then Withdraw referral last, under a separator. It opens from the button to the right of the patient's name, beside Update details and the Download PDF icon. Behind it, the page shows the next step, the Summary, Sent to, Messages and History.
The `...` menu on a sent referral, with `Withdraw referral` last.

Afterwards, a banner on the referral's page says when it was withdrawn, the header shows Withdrawn, and History records who withdrew it. You can still open, download, print, and archive it, but not change it, resend it, or message about it. On the Sent tab it sits in the Withdrawn group at the end of the list, unless you archived it.

Archive only tidies your Sent list. Archiving takes a referral off your practice's Sent list only. It doesn't withdraw it or turn off the patient's link. Unarchive it anytime.

  1. In the sidebar, open Referrals.
  2. Select the Sent tab.
  3. Open the referral.
  4. To the right of the patient's name, open the ... menu.
  5. Select Archive.
  6. In the Archive referral dialog, select Archive to confirm.

To find it again: above the list, select Filters, then under Archive, check Show archived only. You can Unarchive it from its page anytime.