Designed for Impact: CRN’s Shift from Manual Referrals to Meaningful Work

Published On: August 11, 2025

In healthcare and social services, referrals are essential for connecting individuals to the services and support they need. Yet the process is often slow and fragmented. Reliance on outdated methods like fax, phone and email leads to delays, miscommunication and missed opportunities. Likewise, without clear visibility into referral status, it's difficult to "close the loop" and ensure people receive the services they need.

The Community Resource Network (CRN) is a digital platform that allows clinical, behavioral and social service providers to send, receive and track referrals in real time. This replaces manual processes and helps ensure that critical factors such as food insecurity, housing instability and employment support are addressed enabling whole-person care and improving overall well-being.

Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) are the non-medical factors that affect a person's health—like access to food, housing, transportation and employment. These everyday needs often go unseen in traditional healthcare, but they can have a large impact on patient outcomes.

The $80 That Changed Everything

A woman with diabetes kept returning to the ER with worsening symptoms. Doctors adjusted her medication, but nothing worked.

Then one clinician asked a simple follow-up question,
"why isn't the medication working for you?"
Her answer was,
"it needs to be refrigerated. I don't have a refrigerator."

An $80 appliance that kept her medicine at the right temperature made all the difference. By acknowledging and addressing an environmental factor, a woman was able to get the care she needed. CRN helps uncover these hidden barriers every day, turning one-time fixes into lasting solutions.

The Impact of Community Resource Network

CRN users, or network partners, participated in a return on investment (ROI) study that showed the impact and value they receive from utilizing CRN for their patients and communities.

The ROI study gathered feedback, examples and analytics from a wide range of partners, including medical, dental, mental health, integrated care, multilingual referral services and family support programs.

Real-Time Transparency

A key challenge in referral communications is the lack of follow-up. In many cases, 50% of partners never received a follow-up after making a phone referral, 44% are left without follow-up after sending a referral by email or fax and 17% never received any response at all. This leaves those making referrals with limited options – either to follow up manually or risk no response, which can cause delays in care and services.

The Community Resource Network (CRN) helps solve this problem by offering real-time updates on referral status across partner organizations. This added transparency improves communication, reduces the need for manual follow-ups and supports better coordination of care and essential services.

Faster Referrals Sent Out – What used to take six minutes to make a traditional referral now takes two minutes. Across teams and entire organizational staff, that time adds up quickly. In one year alone, CRN partners saved 232 hours and over $7,000 in staff time—time that went back into helping people, not chasing paperwork.

232 staff hours saved in a year

Faster Referrals Received – Referrals can take up to two days to be received and processed. CRN simplifies and accelerates this process by integrating referrals directly into their database within 24 hours. By eliminating the manual steps to process referrals, CRN helps providers connect with clients sooner and start care without unnecessary delays.

Purpose-Driven Work – CRN reduces time spent on repetitive tasks like scanning forms, faxing and manually entering referrals, giving professionals more time to focus on what matters most: caring for people. Its built-in resource directory also makes it easier to discover new, relevant services, leading to stronger referrals and better outcomes.

Long-Term Adoption – For many providers, CRN represents more than just a new tool, it's a return to more compassionate, coordinated care.

Most network partners were up and running within a week thanks to strong support and responsive tech teams. Early issues were quickly resolved, and today, users consistently report that CRN is more efficient, intuitive and impactful than traditional referral methods.