Outsource Care Schedules

If you have an external provider, you can outsource a referral's care schedule directly from the referral.

To outsource a care schedule:

  1. In Referral Management, select the Referrals tab.

  2. Select a referral for the required service user.

  3. In the Referral Summary panel, select Edit.

  4. On the referral's navigation menu, select Care Schedules.

  5. Under Existing Care Schedules, select the care schedule you want to outsource from the dropdown.

  6. Select Outsource.

    The Outsource Care Schedule dialog appears, which lets you select the visits to outsource and choose the providers to outsource them to.

  7. In the Package Details tab:

    1. If required, update the Package Reference. This is automatically generated but can be manually updated if needed.

    2. Tick the box for each visit to be outsourced.

  8. Select the External Providers tab.

  9. Select each external provider who is to receive the care package. If you select multiple providers, the package goes to the first provider who accepts the care schedule.

  10. Select Save.

The care package is now displayed in the Pending Packages section of the external provider’s Care Provider Portal, where they either accept or reject the care package.

In the referral, the outsourced visits appear with a darker outline on the week view calendar in the care schedule, and an Outsource Pending icon displays in the bottom right.

Note the following:

  • If a change is made to the duration of a visit after the care package is outsourced, the external provider will not see the change in duration until after the care package has been accepted. Therefore, before editing the visit duration, recall the care package by deleting it, edit the visit duration, and then create and send the care package again.

  • Once a care package has been outsourced, new visits cannot be added to the outsourced selection. Visits can only be selected when creating the package.

  • External providers can be added or removed up until the care package is accepted.

To check the status of the outsourced care package:

  1. On the referral's Care Schedules page, select Outsource.

  2. Select the External Providers tab.

  3. Check the details against the selected Provider. The following information is shown:

    • Requested By – who created the outsource care schedule, or who last amended it, for example to add another external provider.

    • Requested At – the date and time the request was created.

    • Status – the status of the request, which could be Pending, Accepted or Rejected.

    • Responded At – the date and time the response was provided.

If a care package no longer needs to be outsourced, you can remove it as follows:

  1. On the referral's Care Schedules page, select Outsource.

  2. Select Delete.

  3. When asked Are you sure you want to delete this outsourced package?, select Yes.

    The care package is no longer shown as outsourced. It is removed from the Care Provider Portal for the external provider, and the visit calendar is updated to reflect the deleted outsourced package.

When the external provider accepts the package, it updates the status against the Outsource Care Schedule in Referral Management:

The Status updates to Accepted and the Responded At field shows the date and time the external provider accepted the package.

You can also view the Status update by hovering over the Outsource icon on the visit calendar:

When the external provider rejects the package, it updates the status against the Outsource Care Schedule in Referral Management:

The Status updates to Rejected and the Responded At field shows the date and time the external provider rejected the package.

You can also view the Status update by hovering over the Outsource icon on the visit calendar: