How to set up custom actions for radiology referral order…

You’ll need a Chatref account (new accounts start with $50 in free credit, no credit card required) and a basic agent already trained on your practice’s radiology services, insurance panels, and referral policies. If you haven’t set that up, start with your hours, services, accepted plans, and the exams you offer. For more on tailoring the agent to your center, see our Radiology & Imaging Centers guide.

Decide what data the referral order must include. Most centers need at minimum:

• Patient full name, date of birth, phone, email
• Ordering provider name, NPI, contact
• Exam type (MRI, CT, X-ray, ultrasound, etc.), body part, clinical question
• Insurance carrier, policy number, group ID

You’ll also need to know where you want that data to land. Chatref can send it by email (to a referral coordinator, for example) or post it to a webhook if your team has a developer who can wire it to your practice management system or scheduling tool. If you don’t have a direct integration, the agent can still collect the details and present a clean summary for your staff to act on from the Chatref shared inbox.

1. Open your agent’s settings
   From the Chatref dashboard, select the agent you’ve built for your radiology center. Go to the Custom Actions section (usually found in the left-hand menu under the agent’s configuration).

2. Create a new custom action
   Click Add Custom Action. Give it a clear name, like “Radiology Referral Intake.” This is the name your team sees in logs, so make it specific.

3. Define the information to collect
   In the action builder, add fields for every piece of referral data your team needs. For example:

   • Patient First Name (required)
   • Patient Last Name (required)
   • Date of Birth (required, date format)
   • Phone (required)
   • Email
   • Ordering Provider (required)
   • Ordering Provider NPI
   • Exam Type (dropdown: MRI, CT, X-ray, Ultrasound, Nuclear Medicine)
   • Body Part (text)
   • Clinical Question (text area)
   • Insurance Carrier (required)
   • Policy Number (required)
   • Group ID
     Mark the ones your intake process can’t function without as required. Chatref will prompt the user for missing fields.

4. Choose the delivery channel
   Under Action Destination, pick Email and enter the address of your referral coordinator or intake team. If you have a webhook endpoint ready (built by your developer to receive a JSON payload), select Webhook and paste the URL. If you prefer a manual workflow, leave the destination blank – the agent will display the collected data as a formatted summary inside the chat, and your team can handle it from the shared inbox.

5. Add a confirmation message
   Write a short response the patient or referrer sees after they submit the form, such as “Thank you. Your referral has been sent to our scheduling team. We’ll contact you within one business day to confirm your appointment.”

6. Train the agent to offer the action
   The agent won’t know when to present the intake form unless you teach it. Go to your agent’s Knowledge Base and add a snippet of instruction like: “If a visitor asks about scheduling an imaging exam, a referral, or sending an order, offer to start the ‘Radiology Referral Intake’ custom action so they can submit details right away.” Save the knowledge base updates and allow a minute for re-training.

7. Save and activate
   Save the custom action and verify it’s toggled on for the agent. The action is now live.

Open your practice website and launch the Chatref widget. (You can also use the Playground tab inside the Chatref dashboard for testing.) Try a natural phrase a referring office would use, such as “I need to send a patient for an MRI of the left knee.” The agent should respond by offering to start the Radiology Referral Intake action.

Walk through the form, filling all required fields and intentionally skipping one to confirm the validation message appears. Submit the referral. If you chose email delivery, check the inbox within 30-60 seconds; otherwise watch the chat for the summary. If you used a webhook, verify the endpoint received a JSON payload with field values.

Edge cases to test:

• A missing required field (like Date of Birth) should block submission and prompt for it.
• A long clinical question field should handle multiple lines.
• An exam type not in the dropdown should cause the agent to ask for clarification.

The agent doesn’t suggest the custom action. Revisit your knowledge base instructions: the trigger keywords (“referral,” “schedule imaging,” “send order”) need to appear in the content or in the training snippet you added. Also confirm the action is toggled on for this agent; a forgotten toggle is the most frequent cause.

Some fields are never captured. Check if they’re marked as required. If they’re optional, the patient may skip them. Add a short hint in the field description (e.g., “Include your group ID if you have it — it speeds up authorization”) or make it required if it’s essential.

Data doesn’t arrive at the destination. For email, confirm the email address is correct and that Chatref’s sending address isn’t caught in your spam filter. For webhooks, test the URL with a tool like curl or Postman to make sure it accepts the payload structure. You can also temporarily switch to email delivery to isolate the issue.

Staff still need to chase information. Review the referral summary format and the instructions you gave the agent. You can always add a free-text note at the bottom of the form asking “Anything else we should know?” and train the agent to prompt for that if the clinical question seems vague.

What causes radiology referral order intake problems for Radiology & Imaging Centers?

Manual processes – faxes, phone calls, emails with incomplete info – create a constant need for chase calls. A referring office might forget to include the exam type, insurance details, or clinical reason, forcing radiology front desks to spend hours gathering the missing pieces before they can schedule. Without structure, intake becomes a bottleneck that delays care and frustrates both patients and providers.

How do I improve radiology referral order intake for Radiology & Imaging Centers?

Give referring offices a structured, digital way to submit referrals that validates required fields upfront. Chatref custom actions let you design a form that collects everything your team needs in a single interaction, then routes it automatically to the right person or system. Because the agent is trained on your own radiology documentation, it can also answer common questions about prep instructions and insurance requirements alongside the intake, reducing the back-and-forth further.