Referrals are the most common way new patients arrive in your clinic. Thrive Clinical gives you a dedicated workflow for receiving inbound referrals, reviewing the patient details, and accepting or rejecting them — with full auditability for everything that comes in.
How Referrals Arrive
Inbound referrals can reach your clinic in two ways:
| Source | How it works |
| Public referral form | A form configured with Form Usage = Referral in your Templates list. Anyone with the link can view the form, but submitters must sign in (or create a Thrive account) before they can submit |
| Bulk document upload | Your team uploads a batch of referral PDFs; Thrive's AI extracts patient details from each one and creates a referral form submission |
For both sources, the referral lands in your Referral List for review.
To configure a form as a referral form, see Building Form Templates → Configuring a Form for Referrals.
The Referral List
The Referral List is a dedicated view scoped to referrals — separate from your main worklist, with sort and filter defaults tuned for triage.
Accessing the Referral List
- Click Referrals in the left navigation
- The list opens with your default sort and filter applied
Default Sort and Filter
- Default sort: referrals with status Ready for Review are pinned to the top of the list, so the work waiting on you is always visible first. Everything else (Incomplete, Reviewed, Accepted, Declined) follows.
- Visibility: you only see referrals you have permission to view. Permissions are set per-encounter — your clinic admin controls who can see what.
You can override the default sort and filter per session, or save your own view under Save my view— your preferences persist until you change them.
Columns in the Referral List
| Column | What it shows |
| Patient Name | The patient the referral is for |
| Referrer | The clinic or individual who sent the referral |
| Received | When the referral arrived |
| Status | Where the referral is in your workflow |
| Reason | Reason for referral (when provided) |
| Actions | Quick actions: accept, decline, assign |
Referral Encounter Statuses
A referral has its own status at the encounter level, on top of any regular form statuses inside it. These referral statuses drive your triage workflow:
| Status | Meaning |
| Ready for Review | All required referral fields were captured. Default status for new referrals — ready for a clinician to triage |
| Incomplete | AI ingestion ran but couldn't fill every required field on the referral form. A clinician needs to complete the missing fields before this referral can be reviewed |
| Reviewed | A clinician has confirmed the referral content. Ready for the next step: accept or decline |
| Accepted | Referral accepted; the encounter is now active |
| Declined | Referral declined; reason recorded |
Handling Incomplete Referrals
When a referral arrives via bulk document upload (or any AI-driven ingestion), Thrive's AI auto-fills the digital referral form from the source document. If every required field was successfully extracted, the referral lands in Ready for Review. If one or more required fields are missing, the referral encounter status is Incomplete and the referral form inside it sits as In Progress, waiting for a clinician to fill the gaps.
An Incomplete referral hasn't been submitted yet, so no summary is generated for it. To clear it:
- Open the referral from the Referral List
- Review the auto-filled fields and the source document side by side
- Fill in the missing required fields (the form will indicate which ones)
- Submit the form
The referral encounter status moves to Reviewed automatically once all required fields are present and the form is submitted. From there you can Accept or Decline the referral as usual.
Reviewing a Referral
Each referral in the worklist has an Accept button on its row. Clicking it opens the review panel, a workspace built for triage.
Customizable Panes
The review panel is made up of stackable, tabbable panes covering the source document, the extracted referral form, and (when available) the generated summary. Each pane can be dragged by clicking the six-dot icon beside its title — place it wherever suits your triage flow: side by side with another, stacked above or below, or grouped into tabs. Your layout is remembered on this browser.
The Source Document pane has buttons to open the original file in a new tab or download it. If the source isn't a PDF, the pane shows a download link instead of a preview.
Deciding
Accept Referral and Decline Referral sit at the top of the panel, beside the patient identity (name, date of birth, PHN, and current status). Whichever pane you're focused on, the decision buttons stay visible.
Confirming Extracted Details
The AI pulls whatever it can find in the referral document — patient demographics, contact details, reason for referral, clinical history, medications, and any other fields your form captures — and populates the referral form for you. The source pane sits next to the form specifically so you can compare the two in one place.
Accepting a Referral
When you accept a referral, Thrive creates the patient record (if new), opens an encounter, and links the referral document and any extracted data to it.
- Click Accept on the referral's row in the worklist to open the review panel, then click Accept Referral at the top of the panel
- Confirm or correct the patient details
- Choose whether to send the patient a notification email — they can claim their PHR and view the referral on their end if they have (or create) a Thrive Personal account
Sending the Patient an Acknowledgment
Once a referral is accepted, you can notify the patient by email so they know the referral was received. The notification contains no PHI — just confirmation that a referral has been received and a link to onboard.
Patients who already have a Thrive Personal account click the link and land directly on the referral details. Patients new to Thrive go through onboarding first, then see their referral.
Declining a Referral
You can decline from two places:
- From the worklist row's action menu: open the row's three-dot menu and select Decline Referral. A confirmation prompt asks you to confirm.
- From inside the review panel: click Decline Referral at the top of the review review panel beside the patient identity.
In both paths, choose a reason (out of scope, missing information, duplicate, etc.) and add notes, then confirm.
Declining a referral preserves the full record for audit purposes. The referrer is notified if your clinic has notifications configured.
Triggering Automations on AI Ingest
Workflow automations can fire as soon as Thrive's AI finishes ingesting a referral PDF. Use the Referral import trigger when you want a rule to act on the referral the moment it lands — for example, route it to a specific worklist by diagnosis or flag it for clinical review.
The trigger fires once per ingested referral, after the AI extraction completes. The automation runs against the encounter and the form submission Thrive creates from the AI's extraction.
See Automating Workflows for full setup steps.
Bulk Document Upload
For clinics that receive referrals as PDFs (faxed in, emailed as attachments, downloaded from another system), you can upload them in bulk.
- Click Referrals → Bulk Upload (or the + New menu on the Referral List)
- Select up to 50 PDF files at a time
- Confirm
- Each file is queued as a separate referral ingestion job
The AI runs on each PDF independently — extracting patient details and creating a referral record. The results appear in the Referral List as they finish processing.
Tracking Bulk Ingest with the Job List
Every referral ingestion (whether bulk or single-file) is logged as a Job. The Job List gives you full visibility into who triggered each ingestion, what was uploaded, and whether it succeeded.
Accessing the Job List
- Click Jobs in the left navigation
- The list shows recent jobs across all categories
Job List Columns
| Column | What it shows |
| Type | What job ran (e.g., Referral Ingestion) |
| Status | In Progress, Succeeded, or Failed |
| Input | The context — filename, batch ID |
| Output | The resulting patient record or referral, linked for quick access |
| Details | For failures: why the job didn't complete (e.g., "Could not extract required fields (name, DOB) for referral") |
| Date | When the job was triggered |
| Created By | The user who initiated the action |
When to Check the Job List
- After a bulk upload — confirm every file processed and that nothing silently failed
- When a referral seems missing — search by filename or uploader to find what happened
- For compliance audits — every bulk action is captured, including who did it and when
Referral Activity Log
Each referral has its own activity timeline visible in the referral details view. It records every action taken on that referral: who reviewed it, status changes, the acceptance or decline action, and any messages exchanged. Use this for case-level traceability.
Organization-wide activity (across all referrals and other actions) lives in the Organization Activity Log in Clinic Settings.
Public Referral Form
If your clinic has configured a form as a referral form (see Building Form Templates → Configuring a Form for Referrals), it gets a public URL you can share with referrers or post on your clinic website.
How it works for the submitter:
- The referrer opens the link and sees the form preview — no login required to view.
- To actually submit, they must sign in (or create a Thrive account) and then complete the form. This authentication step ensures every submission is traceable to a real person.
- After submitting, they see a confirmation screen.
How it works on your end:
- Each submission creates a new referral encounter and lands in your Referral List with status Ready for Review.
- The submission is recorded in the Organization Activity Log with the submitter's name and the time of submission.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Solution |
| Referral isn't appearing in the list | Check the Job List for the corresponding ingestion job — it may have failed (see the Details column) |
| Wrong patient details extracted | Open the referral and correct the fields in the review panel before accepting; the AI extraction is a starting point, not the source of truth |
| Source document doesn't preview | If the source isn't a PDF, the Source Document pane shows a download link instead of a preview |
| Layout keeps snapping back to the default | Drag a pane by clicking the six-dot icon beside its title; the layout is saved per browser, so a different browser or a cleared session will start fresh |
| Bulk upload is slow | Each file processes independently; large bulk uploads (20+ files) can take several minutes to complete |
| Bulk Upload option not visible | Bulk referral upload may not be turned on for your clinic. Contact Thrive support |
| Automation didn't fire on a referral import | Confirm the automation uses the **Referral import** trigger and that any conditions you set are matched by the extracted form data. See Automating Workflows |