Leveraging AI to Reduce Administrative Burden

It’s 4:30 PM, and Sarah, a referral coordinator at a busy home health agency, is staring at a faxed referral packet: 78 pages long. She needs to extract demographics, insurance details and clinical notes, then manually enter them into the system before the end of the day. Every minute counts because her agency is competing for this referral.

She scrolls through page after page, hunting for the diagnosis code, double-checking payer information and hoping she doesn’t miss anything. Meanwhile, her phone continues to buzz with questions from the intake team. By the time she finishes, nearly 15 minutes have passed. And that’s just one referral. Multiply that by dozens of referrals a day, and it’s easy to see why Sarah feels burnt out and the organization is struggling to keep up.

For many healthcare providers, this is still the reality of the intake department. And for a long time, it felt like one without a clear path forward.

Rethinking What Referral Intake Could Look Like

Although this fragmented process is common in many organizations, it does not have to be the norm.

Netsmart Referral Manager™ was designed to reimagine how referrals are received, managed and moved forward. The solution helps teams gather referrals from multiple sources into a single, centralized experience. eFaxes, secure messages and PDFs land in one place instead of being scattered across systems.

That centralized collection alone can change how teams work. Intake staff can see what is pending, what is missing and what needs to be done next without toggling between tools. Once a referral is accepted, information flows into the care record rather than being retyped downstream.

But the real shift happens when augmented intelligence (AI) enters the picture.

Putting AI to Work in the Background

Smart Referrals, the latest capability within Referral Manager, applies AI to what is traditionally a time-consuming part of intake: manual data entry.

Traditionally, staff receive a referral document and begin the lengthy process of extracting demographics, insurance details and clinical information by hand. The document format does not help. It might be a faxed form, a scanned PDF or even handwritten notes. Every variation adds time to the intake, and it adds up quickly.

With Smart Referrals, that process looks different. When a referral document is received through eFax or a PDF is manually uploaded, AI sifts through the content and pulls key data into structured fields. Demographics, payer information and clinical details appear in the referral record with minimal staff intervention. The original document remains attached for reference, while the system flags any missing information that still needs attention.

The work happens quietly in the background. Intake staff are not asked to learn complex new steps or wait for processing to finish. They can continue reviewing referrals while Smart Referrals supports the intake process behind the scenes.

The result feels less like automation replacing people and more like technology amplifying their efforts.

Shifting the Focus Back to People

When staff spend less time typing and retyping information, they can focus on what matters most. Is this referral a good clinical fit? Can services start quickly? Are there barriers that need to be addressed now rather than later?

Intake teams often describe feeling buried under administrative tasks. Smart Referrals aims to remove some of that weight by reducing repetitive work and helping minimize manual errors that lead to rework.

From an operational lens, the intake process becomes more consistent and predictable. From a human perspective, it means fewer moments where staff feel like the bottleneck in someone else’s care journey.

Staying Competitive When Speed Matters

When it comes to referrals, speed often influences opportunity. Referral partners expect timely responses. Delays can lead them to look elsewhere, even when care quality is strong.

By centralizing referrals and supporting intake with AI, Referral Manager with Smart Referrals helps organizations modernize how they respond. Faster processing does not have to come at the expense of accuracy or staff well-being. Instead, it becomes a byproduct of better tools working together.

A Different Way Forward

Referral intake will always require human judgment and collaboration. Technology cannot replace those elements, and it should not try to.

What it can do is manage the burden of manual tasks that pull staff away from meaningful work. It can bring clarity to processes that have grown fragmented over time.

Referral Manager with Smart Referrals reflects a belief that referral workflows can be smarter and more supportive for the people behind them. When AI is put to work in the background, teams are free to focus on making sure people get the best care possible.

Click here to see how AI-powered Smart Referrals can support your organization, contact our experts today.