Send your first referral

Three things:

• A name and an email address for the person you are referring. The email is how their referral link reaches them, so it has to be one they read.
• Who you are referring to. A provider, a practice, or a contact who is not on Syncroly yet, on either type.
• A reason. You pick it from a list, so you do not have to phrase it from scratch.

Most of the rest is optional; the checklist beside the form shows what is left. A veterinary referral needs the species and, for a dog or cat, the breed; a mental health referral asks you to answer the risk question. You can also stop partway and finish later.

There is one form behind every category, and only the clinical part of it changes: a tooth chart for dental, animal details for veterinary, risk factors for mental health, notes alone for the General category. Everything described below behaves the same whichever one you see.

One section carries the contact details, and its title follows your category: Patient on dental and mental health, Owner on veterinary, Contact on the General category.

If you are not a provider yourself, a Sending as section opens the form, with an information button beside its title. Choose who the referral is from: one of your practice's providers, or the practice, listed last as your practice's name followed by (no provider named). The recipient and the person you referred see that choice as the referrer. You choose it per referral, so it is not a setting you have to maintain. With one provider at your practice, Syncroly selects them for you; with none, it selects the practice.

The practice is not offered on a Front desk sign-in, when your practice requires a clinician to send, or while your workspace is limited to your own referrals. Then the section appears only when two or more providers could be the referring provider, and with exactly one, Syncroly selects them for you and the section stays hidden.

Until you choose a specialty, Reason and Send to say Choose a specialty. Changing it clears the reasons you selected, and with practices added it asks first, so set the specialty first.

General category referrals have a single specialty and no picker at all: the form goes from contact details to the reason and recipients.

The Send to section holds the two cards (Direct and who chooses), the practices you added, then the search box with Load shortlist beside it.

The cards are the decision that shapes everything else. Direct sends the referral to one recipient on the referred person's behalf, and you confirm their consent as part of sending. The other card lets the person you referred pick from the recipients you chose, and is named for who chooses: Patient chooses on dental and mental health, Owner chooses on veterinary, Contact chooses on the General category. Direct vs Choice, and which to use has the full comparison.

A provider marked Not accepting referrals has switched off new referrals in their own settings, and the picker will not let you choose them. Their practice has no such switch, so you can still add the practice.

Each practice you add gets a provider chip on its card, reading Any provider. The practice receives the referral either way; choosing one of its providers on the chip addresses it to them as well.

Load shortlist fills the open slots from the shortlist you saved for that specialty and says what it added, so a routine referral needs no typing.

When the search finds nobody usable, either type offers Add as a new contact (Add as a new recipient on General), which is how you refer to somebody who is not on Syncroly yet.

The clinical part is what is genuinely different per category. A dental referral offers a tooth chart, a veterinary referral the animal details, a mental health referral a risk question. The General category has notes only. The tooth chart is optional; the animal's species (and a dog's or cat's breed) and the mental health risk answer are asked for.

Files upload while the form is still open, so a large X-ray is moving before you finish typing. A form you abandon leaves no files behind.

If you have the person on the phone and only half the referral in front of you, select Save as draft in the summary beside the form. Until then its status reads Not saved yet. The draft is shared inside your practice, so a colleague can open it and finish the clinical half. After that first save the form saves itself as you work, and the button goes away.

The send button names what it is about to do. On a Direct referral it reads Confirm and send to and the practice's name, and the line directly above it states that you are confirming you have consent to share the referral. Sending records that you confirmed it. On a Choice referral it says how many options go to the person, such as Send 2 options to Jane, and there is no attestation, because the person you referred gives their own consent on their own link.

A checklist above the button lists what is left (Ready to send when nothing is); pressing Send with something left takes you to it instead of sending. On a narrow window the summary floats at the bottom of the screen.

If your practice requires a clinician to send, and you are not one, the button reads something else and the referral goes to the clinician you named rather than out to the recipients. See Send a referral for clinician review.

Syncroly opens the referral you sent, or the Sent tab when you sent it in a colleague's name, and three things happen without you doing anything else.

The person you referred gets a secure link by email. They accept a consent disclosure, then see the recipients you chose with an address, a phone number, a website, and a map.

On a Direct referral, the recipient is notified straight away and can open the full referral, because your attestation is the consent. Everyone else at the receiving practice who should see it is notified too.

On a Choice referral, no recipient learns anything yet. The referral reaches a practice only when the person shares it with them, or when you send it to one of them yourself later.

The referral is now on the Sent tab, under Referrals in your sidebar, with the status Sent. It changes on its own as things happen: Viewed once the person opens the link and accepts the disclosure, In Progress once a receiving practice records that it reached out, Booked when an appointment is confirmed.

Its page says what happens next. It also holds a Summary of what you sent, the practices you chose, Messages for writing to them, Files, and a History of every step. If you got something wrong, Update details on that page corrects it without cancelling or duplicating the referral.