Problems
- Referring facility providers lack the expertise necessary to accurately describe rare conditions to the specialists at tertiary centers
- Tertiary hospitals lack the necessary data to quickly make a global assessment of patient status
- Description of the patient’s condition is often wrong
- Inappropriate transfers are expensive to the network
- Shrinking marketing dollars
- Need to increase patient referral base
- Lack of rigorous data collection and analysis of patient transfer characteristics of referring hospitals, physicians and accepting physicians
