Provider News

New Referral Guidelines for GI, Genetics and Endocrinology

October 2, 2019

Seattle Children’s has released new referral guidelines for Gastroenterology, Endocrinology and Genetics — specialty clinics with access challenges and longer wait times for new patient appointments. Each clinic is open to new referrals.

The new guidelines are designed to improve new patients’ timely access to specialty care while redirecting patients who do not require specialty care to their medical home and primary care provider (PCP), along with resources for PCPs to assist them in managing their patients’ care.

View the new referral guidelines on the “Refer a Patient” pages for:

View the printable PDF flyers summarizing the referral guidelines changes:

Referral guidelines for other specialty clinics will be updated and posted on their “Refer a Patient” webpages as they become available.

Why We Are Updating Referral Guidelines

As our region grows, Seattle Children’s remains committed to expanding specialty services to meet the needs of patients, families and our referring provider community.

Our Challenge: Access to Certain Specialty Clinics

We recognize that several of our specialty clinics have extended wait times.  This is largely due to increased referral volumes, provider departures, and recruitment challenges associated with a nationwide shortage of pediatric specialties in areas such as genetics, neurodevelopmental services, psychiatry, ophthalmology, and rheumatology.  We understand this is frustrating for patients, families and referring providers. Our providers and staff also share in the frustration.

Note that these access challenges are not in all specialties. We have many clinics with access for new patients within 30 days or less, including:

  • Cardiology
  • Diabetes
  • General Surgery
  • Infectious Diseases
  • Nephrology
  • Neurosurgery
  • Orthopedics
  • Otolaryngology

What We Are Doing to Improve Access

We completed a detailed assessment of our clinic access situation and have a project underway to address operational inefficiencies that affect access. We are taking multiple steps to address constraints as part of this project and other organizational initiatives:

  • Scheduling optimization – Implementing numerous changes in our scheduling process, system and clinic staffing model, these changes will increase the number of patients seen in each clinic session, enable scheduling when families call for an appointment and increase outreach to families to schedule.
  • Referral management – Defining diagnoses, conditions and patient populations that must be seen on a timely basis for clinical reasons; clarifying services that we cannot offer; and requiring data on referrals to support triage.
  • org updates – Refreshing our external website detail to increase the usefulness of the site for families and referring providers.
  • Provider recruitment – Securing additional recruiting resources to expedite recruitment and onboarding of new providers.
  • Epic implementation – Transitioning to a single Epic electronic health record (EHR) system in May 2020 to offer multiple improvement opportunities across all functions and improve access to information and communication processes with patients, families and referring providers. Much more information on this will be provided in the coming months.

What You Can Expect

To improve access to specialty care for our community, we will be making more changes in our clinics’ practices and our standard referral requirements. This may include:

  • Limiting care in some specialties for patients over 18 when appropriate by transitioning current patients and directing new patients to adult care.
  • Simplifying referral forms and requiring completion of key data, including ICD-10 code and clinical reason for referral, to ensure accurate referral triage and scheduling.
  • Recommending families seek care from their PCPs for certain common conditions (i.e., constipation and headache), when appropriate, and offering resources to support PCPs (i.e., clinical protocols for evaluation and treatment of common conditions) in the process.

Seattle Children’s goal is to improve access to care across our specialties and ensure that children who need us the most can be seen on a timely basis. We are working collaboratively with Dr. Sheryl Morelli, division chief of Community Pediatrics at Seattle Children’s and chief medical officer at Seattle Children’s Care Network (SCCN), and our physician liaison team to support our efforts.

We look forward to collaborating with community providers to improve access to care for all children. We are committed to being a collaborative partner to you in offering superior specialty clinical care for all children in our community.