Three open referral loops for one composite patient, each given a date, a responsible person and an AHRQ care coordination activity, fill NU432's Unit 7 memo to its practice team. Searches like "nu 432 unit 7 assignment example", "nu432 unit 7 sample" and "nu432 unit 7 example" land here.
Three Referrals Out, None Back: A Care Coordination Memo Tracing Each Loop to Where It Broke
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
NU432: Primary Care in the Ambulatory Setting
Unit 7 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Composite patient and practice written as a model document. Dates are bracketed.
Memo Header
To: [primary care clinician]; [referral coordinator]; [front desk lead].
From: [RN care coordinator].
Date: [date].
Subject: three open referrals for [patient], diabetes with stage 3b kidney disease.
Summary
Six weeks after referral, no nephrology appointment exists, the chart shows her diabetic eye exam as overdue although one was done, and nutrition counseling is stalled. The one thing needed from the clinician is a signature on a resent nephrology referral. Everything else below can be completed by staff.
Loop Table
Nephrology. Sent: [date]. Status: no appointment. Where it broke: the referral was faxed to a number the nephrology office retired in [spring]; no one confirmed receipt. Next action: resend to the current number with a confirmation call. Owner: referral coordinator. Due: [within 2 days].
Eye exam. Sent: [date]. Status: exam done at an outside optometrist in [month]. Where it broke: the report was never requested, so the chart still flags her as overdue. Next action: request the report and update the chart. Owner: front desk lead. Due: [within 5 days].
Dietitian. Sent: [date]. Status: denied by her plan. Where it broke: denial letter filed without follow-up. Next action: refer instead to a recognized diabetes self-management education program the plan covers. Owner: RN care coordinator. Due: [within 7 days].
Framework
These actions follow activities named in AHRQ's Care Coordination Measures Atlas: establishing accountability, communicating across settings and monitoring follow-up (McDonald et al., 2014). In one large health system, many primary care referrals to specialists were never completed or never returned a report to the referring clinician (Patel et al., 2018), so this pattern is not unique to our practice.
Why It Matters for This Patient
Her eGFR has fallen from 48 to 39 over a year, and her diabetes and blood pressure both affect how fast it falls. A nephrology visit, an accurate eye exam record and diet teaching each address a different part of that risk. Every week the loops stay open is a week without the plan the referrals were meant to produce.
Proposed Process Change
A referral stays open in the tracking log until a consult note arrives. Any referral open past 14 days lands on the RN's worklist for a call to the receiving office.
Patient Contact
She was told a nephrologist would call and no one did. The RN called her on [date], explained the delay and gave her the date by which she will hear from nephrology.
References
McDonald, K. M., Schultz, E., Albin, L., Pineda, N., Lonhart, J., Sundaram, V., Smith-Spangler, C., Brustrom, J., Malcolm, E., Rohn, L., & Davies, S. (2014). Care coordination measures atlas (Update). Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Patel, M. P., Schettini, P., O'Leary, C. P., Bosworth, H. B., Anderson, J. B., & Shah, K. P. (2018). Closing the referral loop: An analysis of primary care referrals to specialists in a large health system. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 33(5), 715-721. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-018-4392-z
How this NU432 Unit 7 example is structured
Memo conventions govern the order: bottom line, evidence, requests. The summary is written so the clinician could stop after it and still know what is being asked of her, which is one signature on a resent referral. The table carries the detail, and each row reads left to right as a small story from sending to stalling to repair. Below it, a paragraph ties the actions to activities named in AHRQ's Care Coordination Measures Atlas, establishing accountability, communicating across settings and monitoring follow-up, so the memo shows a framework behind what could look like clerical chasing. The process proposal is kept narrow: a referral stays open in the tracking log until a consult note arrives, and anything open past fourteen days lands on the RN's worklist. Patient contact is logged too, since she was told a nephrologist would call.
Get an NU432 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Coordination prompts range from one patient's referrals to a clinic-wide handoff problem. Share yours, plus the rubric and whatever memo layout your course expects, and a model memo, bottom line first and every action owned and dated, follows within 24-48h. Your first sample is free. Patient details stay composite, with values in brackets. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
NU432 Unit 7 questions, answered
Who should a care coordination memo be addressed to?
Whoever has to act on it. In the sample that means the primary care clinician, the referral coordinator and the front desk lead, because each owns at least one repair. A memo addressed to 'the team' invites everyone to assume someone else will act. If your prompt names a recipient, write to that person and copy the rest.
What does closing the referral loop actually mean?
It means the referring practice knows the patient was seen and has the specialist's findings in the chart. Sending the referral is only the first step; the loop closes when the consult note returns and someone reviews it. The sample's process proposal keeps each referral open in a tracking log until that happens, with a time trigger for review.
How long should a coordination memo be?
Short enough to be read between patients. One to two pages is typical, with the request in the first few lines and detail in a table below. Graders often mark down memos that read like essays, because the genre exists for busy readers. If the rubric sets a length, follow it; the sample runs two pages.