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You can view the main list of referrals from the Main Menu by selecting Lists | Referrals:
Normally, however, you would simply add the referrals as needed from Patient Edit window. Below is the referral section of that window.
When you double click on a referral attachment on this list the following window will show:
(the order number is just a very simple way of letting you set what order the referral attachments will show in the list in the patient edit window).
There is an Edit Referral button in this window. You can also edit a referral by double clicking on that referral in the main referral window accessed from the main menu.
In this example, the referral is another patient. Therefore, most of the fields are not editable, but can only be changed directly from that patient's Patient Edit window.
(For advanced users): The information shown on the form above is actually kept as a copy in the referral table. The reasoning behind this is that it makes reporting much simpler than having to make multiple joins between tables and handle conditional situations.
If the referral is not a person (yellow pages, for instance), the Not Person box can be checked. The notes that you enter here are the notes that will show in the attached referrals for a patient.
Since each patient usually only has one "referred from" item which is what you are usually interested in, there is a Referred From line on the Main window of the Family module. If there is more than one referred from item in the list, then the one that is displayed will be the one closest to the top. This "referred from" field is what is used in various reports as well.
Although this feature has been very powerful from the beginning, adding a new referral was a little clumsy until version 3.1 when this feature was reworked and made smoother. All that is really missing is direct referral letters without having to use batches through Word. Referral letters will be added in version 3.4.