For social workers · August 11, 2026
How FindABed Referrals Work: A Guide for Social Workers and Discharge Planners
From a patient's care needs to a confirmed bed: how searching, referring, and tracking work on FindABed, what facilities see, and how patient privacy is protected along the way. Free for social workers.
FindABed replaces the call-and-fax placement workflow with one screen: search facilities that fit the patient, send referrals, and track every response in one caseload view. Here is the whole loop, start to finish.
1. Create a Free Account
FindABed is free for social workers, discharge planners, and case managers — permanently, with no tiers and no per-referral charges. Sign up with your work email, choose "Social worker," and you have a caseload dashboard.
2. Add the Patient — Initials Only
Patient records on FindABed are deliberately minimal: initials instead of names, age instead of birth date, plus the care details that drive matching — level of care, payer, target discharge date, search radius. Facilities see a case code and care needs, never an identity. Full identity is exchanged the way it always has been: directly between you and the facility that accepts, outside the platform.
3. Search and Match
Search all twelve care types by county, care type, and payment source. Bed availability on FindABed is provider-confirmed and time-stamped — a facility that confirmed open beds this week reads differently than one silent for a month, and the interface shows the difference honestly rather than advertising stale counts.
4. Send Referrals in Two Clicks
A referral pings the facility by text message and email with the case's care profile. Facilities reply from their phone — accept, decline, or waitlist with a timeframe — and every response lands back in your caseload view with a timestamp. No voicemail tag, and a paper trail instead of a memory.
5. Track to Placement
- Statuses move from sent → accepted / waitlisted / declined → toured, contract signed, placed
- Message facilities about an active referral without leaving the record
- Your whole caseload sits in one list — no spreadsheet on the side
- When a placement completes, the record closes with the outcome documented
What It Costs
Nothing, for you — free for social workers is permanent policy, not a promotion. Facilities list and receive referrals free as well; FindABed's revenue comes from facilities only when a placement succeeds. Search results are never ranked by payment.