The Bendigo Health Referral Centre has been established to provide an intake service for the following programs:

• Aged Care Assessment Service (ACAS)
• Carer Support Services and Commonwealth Carer Respite Centre
• Case Management Services (formerly Community Care Options)
• Community Health Speech Pathology
• Home Assessment & Rehabilitation Team (HART)
• Home Nursing Support Service (District Nursing, Palliative Care and Continence)
• Hospital Admission Risk Program - Chronic Disease Management (HARP-CDM)
• Inpatient Rehabilitation
• Outpatient Rehabilitation Services (OPRS)
• Post Acute Care (PAC)
• Regional Wound Consultancy
• Rural Health Team  
• Transition Care 

How to contact the Bendigo Health Referral Centre

Telephone              1300 733 581
Fax                           1300 733 589 (or 03 5454 7099)
Email                       ereferral@bendigohealth.org.au
Encrypted Email    Use facilities on the Connecting Care website
Mail                          PO Box 126, Bendigo, 3552
Visit Commonwealth Carelink Centre, 48 Queen Street, Bendigo, 3550.

How to make a referral

Format
Referrals to the above services should be submitted on the preferred formats listed below. These forms provide prompts for the required information, and/or populate the fields from your patient records. Customised Medical Director template.
A template for use within the Medical Director software has been developed in conjunction with the Bendigo and District Division of General Practice. It is available from the Bendigo and District Division of General Practice website.

• Four pages of the SCTT (Service Coordination Tool Templates) (or Victorian Statewide Referral Form - VSRF) 
  
  Click on relevant forms to download:
  
  SCTT referral form
  
  
• Rehabilitation and geriatric medicine referral form
   
• (A new form - MR73 - is also available for services within Bendigo Health to make referrals to other services within Bendigo Health.)
  Alternatively, we will accept referrals in other formats, but to enable Bendigo Health staff to provide optimum service to your patient/ client, they will need to include the information outlined in the document 'Bendigo Health Referral Centre Referral Content Requirements' which can be obtained by clicking on the document under Publications on the right hand side. 

Delivery

• Fax or post referrals to the Bendigo Health Referral Centre 
• Use the Connecting Care website to either complete a referral online or attach a document that can be securely emailed to the Bendigo Health Referral Centre. 

The expected benefits of this single entry point include:

• Single point for referrers
• Consistent intake practices and processes at Bendigo Health
• Reduction of inappropriate referrals
• Assist obtaining completed referrals
• Service coordination through awareness of other Bendigo Health services
• Initial referral screening

The role of the Referral Centre is to:

• Respond to telephone enquiries about services and the status of referrals
• Receive referrals for nominated departments/ services/ programs
• Confirm client eligibility
• Identify and manage inappropriate referrals
• Register referrals on central database
• Obtain the Bendigo Health UR number
• Search Bendigo Health databases for prior/ current episodes/ services
• Ensure all required referral information is provided
• Assist referrers to provide better referrals
• Acknowledge receipt of referral
• Prepare summary page for referral (coversheet)
• Distribute to Serviced Department/s