External Referral Identifier

The first component is a string of up to 15 characters that identifies an individual referral. It is typically assigned by the referred-to provider application responding to a referral originating from a referring provider application, and it identifies a referral, and the subsequent referral transactions, uniquely among all such referrals for a particular referred-to provider processing application. For example, when a primary care provider (referring provider) sends a referral to a specialist (referred-to provider), the specialist's application system may accept the referral and assign it a new referral identifier which uniquely identifies that particular referral within the specialist's application system. This new referral identifier would be placed in the external referral identifier field when the specialist responds to the primary care physician.