This profile describes what is necessary to communicate and link the referral and/or order number in documentation and metadata associated with services requested by an order placer. It does not describe where orders are placed when the referral and/or order is communicated using CDA documents. It can be used within the context of profiles using the Cross Enterprise Document Workflow, or it can be used outside of those contexts.

This profile is intended to support care coordination. There are a number of situations where outstanding requests for referrals, consultations, studies, lab tests or other services may need to be tracked or followed. These requests can be tracked using identifiers, often referred to as referral numbers or order numbers depending upon the type of service requested. The distinction between an order and a referral is based on jurisdictional policy. From a technical perspective, referral numbers and order numbers are tracked and communicated in the same way, so to save space, we will refer to them simply as orders (and order numbers) in the remainder of this document, but where we have used the term order, it could also be understood as referral.
