METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DISTRIBUTING PATIENT REFERRALS

• US 20090292556A1
• Filed: 08/03/2009
• Published: 11/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 01/09/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Align Technology Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Align Technology Incorporated
• Inventors: Chishti, Muhammad, Vargha, Kenneth, Breeland, Joe
• Granted Patent: US 8,326,647 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/1095 Meeting or appointment
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0258 Registration
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0282 Rating or review of business operators or products
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
• CPC Class Codes: G16Z 99/00 Subject matter not provided for in other main groups of this subclass
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99945 Object-oriented database structure processing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99948 Application of database or data structure, e.g. distributed, multimedia, or image

Abstract

Practitioners are certified to perform a medical procedure, such as an orthodontic procedure. Certified practitioners are maintained in a referral directory and classified within tiers based on criteria such as the number of procedures that they have performed. Inquiries are solicited from prospective patients, and referral lists are provided to those patients who request them. The referral lists are obtained from the referral directory with doctors from higher tiers who have performed more procedures receiving preferential inclusion on the referral lists.

Claims

1-30. -30. (canceled)

31. A method for referring patients to practitioners to perform a procedure said method comprising:

maintaining a referral directory which includes contact information for practitioners, wherein the practitioners are certified to perform the procedure and are prioritized in a plurality of tiers depending on the number of procedures that they have performed;

soliciting and receiving inquiries from prospective patients regarding the procedure; and

referring to individual patients at their requests practitioners within the patient'"'"'s geographic area, wherein practitioners are selected from the referral directory in a manner which preferentially presents practitioners from tiers which require a higher number of procedures relative to practitioners from tiers which require a lower threshold number of procedures.

32. A method as in claim 31, wherein maintaining the referral directory comprises:

certifying practitioners to perform the procedure; and

tracking the number of times each certified practitioner performs the procedure to produce a performance number for each practitioner;

periodically updating the referral directory to reflect updated performance numbers.

33. A method as in claim 32, wherein the performance number comprises the aggregate number of procedures performed by an individual practitioner.

34. A method as in claim 32, wherein the performance number comprises the number of procedures performed by an individual practitioner over a predetermined time interval.

35. A method as in claim 31, wherein the plurality of tiers is at least three.

36. A method as in claim 31, wherein soliciting comprises advertising and providing contact information that permits a patient to contact a referral center.

37. A method as in claim 36, wherein the referral is a person.

38. A method as in claim 36, wherein the coordinator is an automated response system.

39. A method as in claim 31, wherein referring comprises:

determining the location of the patient'"'"'s geographic area; and

generating from the referral directors a referral list of practitioners within the patient'"'"'s geographic area, wherein the list includes a number of practitioners selected and/or arranged so that practitioners from higher tiers are preferentially referred.

40. A method as in claim 39, wherein the higher tiered practitioners are placed on lists in any geographic area more often than lower tiered practitioners.

41. A method as in claim 39, wherein the higher tiered practitioners are placed earlier on a single list than the lower tiered practitioners.

42. A method as in claim 31 wherein referring comprises:

determining the location of the patient'"'"'s geographic area; and

selecting a single practitioner to be referred to the patient, wherein practitioners from higher tiers are selected more often than those from lower tiers.

43. A method as in claims 39 or 42, wherein all practitioners are included on at least some referral lists.

44. A method as in claim 31, wherein the referral directory comprises an electronic database, wherein soliciting comprises receiving voice or data inquiries from potential patients at a central location, and wherein referring comprises generating a referral list from the electronic database and responding to the inquiry by providing the referral list to the patient.

45. A method as in claim 44, wherein generating the referral list comprises presenting an ordered list of practitioners on a display screen and responding comprises reading at least some of the names of the practitioners to the potential patients.

46-59. -59. (canceled)

60. A computer system for generating a list of medical practitioners, for referring to potential patients, said system comprising:

means for maintaining a referral directory which includes contact information for practitioners who are certified to perform a procedure, wherein the practitioners are prioritized in a plurality of tiers depending on the number of procedures that they have performed; and

means for sorting practitioners on the referral directory to produce a referral list in response to an inquiry from a prospective patient in a particular geographic location wherein practitioners are first sorted based on proximity to the geographic location and then preferentially selected based on the tier to which the practitioner has been assigned.

61. A computer system as in claim 60, wherein the means for maintaining comprises an electronic database that is updateable to add and remove practitioners and to change the tier status of individual practitioners.

62. A computer system as in claim 60 or 61, wherein the electronic database includes at least three tiers with practitioners who have performed more than a first threshold number of procedures being in a higher tier, those who have performed more than a second threshold number but less than the first threshold number being in a lower tier, and those who have performed less than the second threshold number being in a still lower tier.

63. A computer system as in claim 62, wherein the number of times the procedure is performed is measured over a fixed time interval.

64. A computer system as in claim 62, wherein the number of times the procedure is performed is cumulative.

65. A computer system as in claim 60, wherein the practitioners are not ordered within a tier.

66. A computer system as in claim 60, wherein the practitioners are further ranked within each tier based on the number of procedures performed.

67. A computer system as in claim 60, wherein the means for sorting will select a plurality of practitioners for each referral list with at least practitioners from the highest tier being selected most often, those from the lower tier being selected less often, and those from the still lower tier being selected still less often.

68. A computer system as in claim 60, wherein only a single practitioner is selected for each referral list, with at least practitioners from the highest tier being selected most often, those from the lower tier being selected less often, and those from the still lower tier being selected still less often.

69. A computer system as in claim 60, wherein all practitioners are selected at least some of the time.

70. A computer system as in claim 60, further comprising means for inputting data into the maintaining means and means for displaying the referral lists.