Executive Summary
The Digestive Health Centre of BC (DHC) is a multidisciplinary specialty care centre serving patients across British Columbia. With six sub specialties, 12 physicians, and a single shared fax line, the DHC processes thousands of inbound referrals every quarter. The volume, combined with the complexity of routing each referral to the right physician, made intake an increasingly resource-intensive part of clinic operations.
By partnering with Sentiero Health, the DHC automated its entire referral and document intake workflow. In the first five months of 2026, Sentiero processed 33,252 documents, including 11,210 referrals, and cut the time intake staff spent processing each document from an average of 5 minutes to 12 seconds. The DHC redirected over 500 MOA hours per month from administrative work to patient-facing work, a 4× operational ROI reflecting the staff capacity redirected towards patient care.
About The Digestive Health Centre of BC
The Digestive Health Centre of BC is a multidisciplinary specialty centre for digestive disease, headquartered in Vancouver. As an academic centre, the DHC brings together specialists across six pillars of care, including inflammatory bowel disease, liver disease, colorectal surgery, colon cancer screening, therapeutic endoscopy, and clinical nutrition, all under a single coordinated, multidisciplinary model.
The DHC operates from three locations with 12 physicians and a single shared fax line, and uses Telus Health as its EMR. Sentiero integrates seamlessly with Telus, pushing structured referral and document data directly into the patient record.
The Challenge
Referral intake was pulling staff capacity away from patient care
- Referrals are the DHC's primary patient acquisition channel: Unlike hospitals or GP offices, the DHC depends on inbound referrals to recruit new patients across its six specialties, generating thousands of referrals per quarter.
- A single fax line serving 12 physicians across six sub specialties: Every inbound referral had to be identified, routed to the correct provider, and processed, averaging 5 minutes per document and consuming significant MOA capacity before any patient could be scheduled.
- No operational visibility: Without real-time data on referral volume or source, the team could not identify bottlenecks, track performance, or make informed staffing decisions.
The Solution
Automating referral and document intake with Sentiero
- Automated referral processing: Sentiero's AI system classifies every inbound document, extracts the structured fields the DHC's intake team needs, and reduces per-document processing time to a median of 12 seconds.
- Seamless EMR integration: Referral data is pushed directly into the Telus Health EMR, automatically creating new patient records or matching to existing ones.
- Specialty-aware triage: Sentiero surfaces the clinical fields a gastroenterology team needs to triage referrals quickly, including diagnosis, current medications, recent flares, and prior medical history.
Intake Intelligence is the entry point to Sentiero's broader platform for specialty triage, consult summaries, and clinical decision support.
The Results
More patient capacity from the same staff: Over five months, Sentiero processed 11,210 referrals and tens of thousands of other inbound documents without adding a single FTE to the intake team. The 500+ hours per month it freed up went straight back into patient-facing work, including calls, scheduling, and follow-ups, letting the DHC reach more patients with the same headcount, a 4× operational ROI.
Referrals are the DHC's primary channel for acquiring new patients. Processing them in seconds rather than minutes, with no queue wait, means no referral sits unattended and every prospective patient enters the system the moment they arrive.
“This platform reflects a vision we had for modernizing referral intake within our Centre. Sentiero's technical expertise helped bring that vision to life by translating our manual workflows into an AI solution that integrates seamlessly with our clinical processes.”
Executive Director, The Digestive Health Centre of BC
Conclusion
From Backlog to Real-Time Intake: By automating referral and document intake, the DHC freed its MOA team from hours of daily administrative work and put that capacity toward the patient engagement that improves access, conversion, and growth. Every referral now reaches the patient chart in seconds, not days.