Referral Lifecycle

Every referral moves through a series of states from creation to resolution. The state determines which tab it shows up in and what actions you can take.

Active states

State	What it means
Needs Review	A new submission is waiting for someone on your team to triage it.
Assigned	Someone on your team has taken responsibility for it.
Pending	Work is underway — scheduling, calling the patient, waiting on records.
On Hold	Temporarily paused. The patient declined, records are missing, etc.

Terminal states

State	What it means
Completed	The patient was seen, scheduled, or otherwise resolved.
Closed	Archived. Nothing more is going to happen on this referral.
Cancelled	Called off before completion — by the patient, the referring practice, or you.

State transitions

You can change the state of a referral from its detail page. A Change Status dropdown offers the valid next states for whatever state it’s currently in. The full history of who changed what, when, is visible in the referral’s timeline.

Why it matters

Pipeline snapshot on the dashboard counts by state
Tabs on the Referrals page filter by state
Reports and metrics at the group/health-system level roll these up

If a state doesn’t quite fit your practice’s workflow, that’s fine — teams tend to standardize on a subset. Pick what you’ll actually use and stay consistent.