NHS Referral Intake Automation with MuleSoft and IDP

The challenge NHS leaders will recognise

Across the NHS, referrals and patient queries arrive through a maze of disconnected channels: email inboxes managed by different teams, paper attachments, PDF referral forms, shared mailboxes, and sometimes handwritten notes. Booking teams, mental health services, community care teams, and CHC coordinators all receive thousands of messages every month – and every email requires manual review, triage, and re-entry into clinical systems.

For many Trusts, the reality is clear:

Patients and GPs send referrals into the void, unsure if they’ve been received, or sometimes send them multiple times, creating duplication and extra work.
Administrative teams spend hours every day sorting email attachments into the right place, onto the right records or appointments.
Clinicians are slowed down by incomplete or inconsistent referral data, which delays important appointments or tests.
Risk-related information can arrive late or be missed altogether, creating delays for patients in need of support.

The result is a system under daily pressure – and no amount of extra staffing solves the root problem: manual, fragmented intake processes do not scale.

Everyturn Mental Health (Everyturn) is a specialist provider of integrated mental health services working in partnership with the NHS. Operating across multiple regions, they deliver talking therapies, crisis support and prevention-focused services, helping to create more consistent, joined-up pathways of care for local communities faced this exact challenge before they started working with Infomentum.

The digital response - centralisation instead of more staffing

Like many NHS organisations, Everyturn relied on regional inboxes and manual processing to manage incoming referrals. Some were typed, others handwritten, and all required staff to open, review, interpret and re-key information into PC-MIS or RIO.

They recognised the same pattern seen across the NHS.

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Instead of hiring more administrators, they decided to centralise all referrals into a single digital intake layer using:

MuleSoft APIs
Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)
A unified inbound referral worflow
Direct integration into their clinical systems

For the first time, Everyturn had a shared service model across all regions: one process, one intake route, one set of standards – and a single view of every referral entering the organisation.

What changed - from hours of triage, to minutes

The impact was immediate.

As IDP scanned each referral (email, PDF, or scanned document), it automatically extracted key clinical and demographic information and routed it into PC-MIS via MuleSoft.

In the first week alone:

25% of referrals were processed with zero human involvement.
44% were automatically flagged for rapid human validation.
Manual re-entry dropped dramatically.
Triage decisions sped up because information was structured and consistent.
Staff who previously spent hours in inboxes could focus on supporting clinicians and patients.

What once required multiple administrators across multiple regions now happens centrally, consistently, and in minutes.

Why this matters for the NHS

Everyturn’s transformation is a blueprint for NHS Shared Service Hubs, ICB-level coordination, and Trust-level referral modernisation.

Their success shows that a single shared intake service can become the digital front door for:

Mental Health referrals
CHC referrals
Community mental health triage
AHP bookings
Outpatient queries
GP referrals into specialist services
CAMHS referrals
Community nursing requests

Instead of each department managing its own inbox – with its own duplicated processes, delays, and risks – the entire organisation benefits from a single model:

One inbox. One workflow. One set of APIs. One source of truth.

This mirrors the policing story where a single digital contact layer reduced 999/101 duplication and transformed the public’s access experience. The NHS challenge is different, but the underlying principle remains the same.

The impact - Small teams, big results

The most powerful lesson for the NHS is how small the team was at Everyturn as a NHS Provider.

Everyturn delivered this transformation with:

1 IT lead
1 project manager, and
Infomentum delivering API-led architecture, IDP, and managed services.

No large digital team. No major restructure. No multimillion-pound programme.

Just smart integration, reusable APIs, and a unified intake strategy.

Everyturn delivered this transformation with:

1 IT lead
1 project manager, and
Infomentum delivering API-led architecture, IDP, and managed services.

No large digital team. No major restructure. No multimillion-pound programme.

Just smart integration, reusable APIs, and a unified intake strategy.

For NHS leaders, this shows that Shared Service modernisation doesn’t require large-scale investment to begin delivering value. It requires starting with the inboxes and referral flows that consume the most staff time – and using technology to simplify, then scale.

DISCOVER OUR NHS SOLUTIONS

Let's think about what we could create for your teams

The NHS handles millions of emails every month across booking centres, CHC teams, mental health services, community health, maternity, and outpatient care. But you all want to reduce manual steps, inbox volume, and the constant back-and-forth between patients and staff.

Everyturn’s experience proves that:

Centralising intake reduces duplication
IDP removes manual rekeying
APIs eliminate delays and errors
Standardised workflows improve safety
Patients are triaged faster
Staff spend more time supporting care, not managing email

And – critically, you don’t need dozens of people or new systems to do it. You need a shared service intake layer, built with MuleSoft and IDP, that works across the organisation.

Everyturn’s experience shows what many NHS teams already know: The inbox and phone lines you use are no longer sustainable – and you don’t need a huge programme to fix it.

If your service is struggling with rising demand, slow triage, or fragmented referral routes, now is the time to take the first step.

Talk to our team of experts at Infomentum. We can help you pinpoint a single pathway, automate its intake safely, and prove the model inside 90 days, just like we did for Everyturn.

One digital solution, one workflow, one source of truth. It starts with a conversation. We are here when you’re ready.

From referral chaos to one digital front door

Everyturn Mental Health automated their entire referral intake in weeks. The results from week one alone will make you rethink your inboxes.

The challenge NHS leaders will recognise

For many Trusts, the reality is clear:

The digital response - centralisation instead of more staffing

What changed - from hours of triage, to minutes

The impact was immediate.

What once required multiple administrators across multiple regions now happens centrally, consistently, and in minutes.

Why this matters for the NHS

The impact - Small teams, big results

Everyturn delivered this transformation with:

Everyturn delivered this transformation with:

Let's think about what we could create for your teams

Talk to our team of experts at Infomentum. We can help you pinpoint a single pathway, automate its intake safely, and prove the model inside 90 days, just like we did for Everyturn.

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