Referral Coordinator Staffing: Build a Workload and Capacity Model

Define the staffing decision before collecting data

A practice might need to cover an absence, support a new referral source or understand persistent unfinished work. These are different decisions. State the week, included services and administrative tasks before calculating a headcount.

This article provides an original proposed worksheet for weekly labor planning. It does not prescribe a coordinator-to-referral ratio, clinical responsibilities or a productivity target.

Use the referral coordinator hiring guide when defining a role and assessing candidates. Here, the question is how much qualified time the work requires and where the proposed schedule falls short.

Choose a unit that staff can recognize: a received intake packet reviewed, a missing-information request prepared, an outreach attempt completed or an appointment change processed. Define where each task begins and ends. A single referral may generate several task occurrences in different weeks.

Do not combine complete referral journeys with their individual component tasks in the same total. That would count the same work twice.

Separate handling time from waiting time

The National Infusion Center Association's capacity-model article distinguishes active touch time from elapsed lead time. That distinction is useful for the worksheet: a referral awaiting a response for three days does not consume three days of coordinator labor.

Measure the minutes spent performing a task, including the documentation needed to finish it. Record follow-up checks as separate work when they happen. Keep elapsed delay in the tracking system, where it can inform process improvement without inflating labor demand.

Observe different staff, task types and operating conditions. Record the sample size, collection period, exclusions and whether the value is a measured average or a provisional estimate. A quick sample is a starting assumption, not a universal standard.

Do not use time in an "in progress" status as staff effort unless you have validated what that timestamp represents. Staff may leave a record open while doing other work.

For this model, each employee's minute is counted once. Where two people work together, both contribute labor. Where one employee monitors an automated process while performing another task, allocate that employee's time without duplicating the overlapping minutes.

Build the weekly task-demand worksheet

Forecast work expected to require staff attention during the selected week. Include new receipts, scheduled follow-up on existing episodes and known carried work. Use the same task definitions when comparing the forecast with actual work.

Hypothetical example: the figures below are invented planning inputs for one administrative team. They are not Linear Health results or industry benchmarks. The middle column shows expected occurrences x active minutes per occurrence.

The calculation is task occurrences x active minutes per occurrence, summed across tasks. Required labor is 5,260 minutes, or 87 hours and 40 minutes.

The 575 occurrences are not 575 unique referrals. Some refer to the same episode, and some concern referrals received before the planning week. The 12-minute intake assumption covers the defined intake task only, not the full referral journey.

Add columns for the forecast owner, underlying count source, effort-sample date and required skill. Keep uncertain inputs visible. For example, mark exception volume as an estimate if that work is not yet categorized reliably.

Calculate available minutes employee by employee

Start with actual scheduled hours, not nominal team headcount. Deduct commitments that prevent work on the tasks included above.

The NHS England and NHS Improvement core model guide compares required and available capacity. It provides UK planning context, not a US coordinator staffing ratio.

Continuing the hypothetical example: the team has two employees scheduled for 40 hours and one for 24 hours. The deductions below are separate, nonoverlapping commitments for that week: leave, meetings, breaks and other nonqueue duties, and training.

Available capacity is 78 x 60 = 4,680 minutes. Required labor is 5,260 minutes. The modeled shortage is 580 minutes, or nine hours and 40 minutes.

These deductions are illustrative scheduled commitments, not recommended break or meeting allowances. Preserve applicable organizational policies and actual employee arrangements.

If a task is included in the demand worksheet, do not also deduct it as a nonqueue duty. If a trainer and trainee attend the same session, deduct the time from each person's availability because each employee is occupied.

Read the gap as a decision, not a verdict on staff

The 580-minute shortage says the listed work does not fit the listed capacity under these assumptions. It does not establish that staff are inefficient or that hiring is the only solution.

Check the model with the team. Were repeat attempts omitted? Is a new intake source generating unfamiliar exceptions? Did the forecast count completed work again? Is someone assumed available while covering another department?

Then identify a concrete response: qualified temporary coverage, a schedule change, removal of an unnecessary administrative step or an explicitly accepted carryover plan. Record who authorizes the response and which tasks it covers.

Consider staff descriptions of interruptions alongside the numbers. The referral coordinator burnout guide addresses work design and coverage. A capacity worksheet should help make the workload visible, not turn every variation into an individual performance problem.

Test volume and task-mix changes separately

A forecast should show which assumptions can change the coverage decision.

In the example, a 20% increase in new intake raises that row from 180 to 216 occurrences. At 12 minutes each, intake demand becomes 2,592 minutes, an increase of 432. Total demand rises to 5,692 minutes and the shortage becomes 1,012 minutes.

That scenario changes only the intake row. It does not pretend that all downstream tasks increase in the same week. Forecast their timing separately if the additional intake will generate more follow-up or booking work.

Now return to the original demand and suppose 12 hours of qualified temporary capacity are available. Adding 720 minutes raises capacity to 5,400 minutes, leaving 140 minutes beyond the original 5,260-minute forecast.

That coverage is not sufficient for every plausible task mix. If administrative exceptions increase from 35 to 50 at 16 minutes each, they require 800 rather than 560 minutes. Total demand becomes 5,500 minutes, leaving a 100-minute shortage even with the extra 12 hours.

These are separate scenarios. Do not describe the 140-minute base-case surplus as protection against the intake increase or the exception increase.

Check skills and daily coverage before accepting the schedule

Total minutes can fit while a required skill remains uncovered.

Suppose only Employee B is currently trained and authorized for the administrative exception task. Reserving 600 of B's available minutes covers the base forecast of 560, with 40 minutes left within that allocation.

If exceptions require 800 minutes, another 200 minutes must move into B's allocation, or another appropriately qualified person must supply that work. Adding a temporary employee who can handle intake only does not directly create exception-review capacity.

Reassign other suitable tasks to free B's time if qualified coverage exists. Document the receiving person and the tasks moved. Do not assume staff can take on clinical or restricted decisions because the spreadsheet shows spare minutes.

Also lay out the schedule by working day. A part-time employee's hours later in the week cannot cover work requiring an earlier response. Weekly arithmetic identifies a labor constraint; it does not prove that every arrival pattern can be served.

Keep intraday release timing and immediate response coverage in their own operating plan. This worksheet determines the week's available labor, not how many messages to send at once. The patient outreach capacity planning guide covers release sizing.

Make carried work explicit in the next forecast

At the next planning cutoff, record what was completed, what remains and why. Carry unfinished tasks forward using their remaining effort, not automatically their original full duration.

Avoid adding all opening work to the new forecast if some of its follow-up tasks are already counted in that week's rows. Assign an episode-task reference where duplication is otherwise hard to detect.

Use the referral operations dashboard to keep workload and outcome definitions consistent. A staffing review can then distinguish "the work required more minutes" from "the same work waited longer for an external response."

If carried work has grown into a sustained accumulation, the referral backlog reduction plan covers the time-bounded recovery project. The weekly model continues to supply its capacity inputs.

If sustained shortages lead to a hiring decision, keep the ongoing coverage requirement separate from the costs associated with coordinator turnover. The weekly model estimates labor demand, not recruitment expense or financial return.

Use a short approval record

Before adopting the schedule, complete this record with the operations lead and team representative:

Stop using a single average when it obscures materially different work. Split the row, improve the sample or plan a range rather than making the estimate look more precise.

For a broader referral coordination automation discussion, bring this worksheet and the actual exceptions.

FAQ

Sources

• National Infusion Center Association: Scale Intake Without Burning Out Your Team: Designing a Data-Driven Capacity Model, March 10, 2026. Used narrowly for the distinction between touch time and lead time.
• NHS England and NHS Improvement: Demand and capacity models, core model user guidance, May 2018, pages 18 and 21. The task worksheet, schedules and scenarios in this article are original hypothetical examples.