Although it is yet to realise its full suite of business integrations, early adopters of Provider Connect Australia are already finding the service is helping reduce their day-to-day admin burden.
When Australian Urology Associates executive manager Phoebe Walker first heard about Provider Connect Australia (PCA) through the Australian Association of Practice Managers (AAPM), she thought the idea was “amazing”.
Australian Urology Associates is a private specialist surgical practice in Melbourne, with just one clinic, but a large enough portfolio of doctors to make the task of keeping their details up to date across all the many external systems the practice works with time consuming and frustrating for its repetitive nature.
“There’s a lot of outdated data on the internet for so many things, but particularly providers,” Ms Walker told Health Services Daily.
“It’s very time consuming because you’re updating all of these various services so that correspondence comes into your software.
“So I liked the idea of having one source of accurate information, and the fact that if you updated through PCA, it would pass through to other connected businesses and services that we use as a practice”.
One stop portal for provider details
Provider Connect Australia (PCA) is a rapidly evolving one stop cloud-based portal built by the Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency) where healthcare providers and their practices can enter information on important day to day changes to their operational practice data once – things like opening hours, new doctors starting or doctors leaving, contact information and available healthcare services – and have that information automatically updated to key business partners and service providers to a practice such as the National Health Services Directory (NHSD).
PCA is still in its early days in terms of the business integrations it connects to, but the plan is for the service to offer one stop connection to a comprehensive suite of the most useful services like secure messaging providers, PHNs, local hospital networks, imaging and pathology providers, the National Health Service Directory (NHSD) and even core patient management system integrations such as Cubiko and Healthshare.
PCA is already connecting to Health Direct’s NHSD, most PHNs, some secure messaging providers and even some local hospital networks. NSW Health has already integrated the service into its internal provider directory for local provider services for its hospital networks.
Productivity gains
Even with this relatively small starting set of connected services, early adopters are reporting productivity gains for their practices.
“Because it’s linked to the NHSD, if we’re trying to locate a doctor that I’m trying to send correspondence to, and they’ve moved, so we want to know where are they now, it’s all there in our system,” Ms Walker said.
This one simple function was enough of a driver of admin efficiency for Ms Walker to go to the trouble of signing up initially, but as time has gone by, the connected services are increasing, and the user interface of the system is becoming easier to use as well.
“Since registering, there have been a couple of times that I wasn’t expecting many changes to our practice, but we had them, including changes to our doctors, and also our business hours,” she said.
“The registration process was a bit time consuming, but worth it due to the advantages. It’s very quick to update your provider details, and then that will pass through to other connected services. It’s basically immediately updated on the directory.
“At the time that we had these changes in doctors, there was a link with our secure messaging service so I could update that on PCA, and then that would update on that on our secure messaging service as well. When that happens an email goes out to other practices, notifying them to update their internal address book.
“It definitely helps that I can log into the portal, update that information [once], and it is shared through all those other organisations.”
As a specialist provider, for every patient seen, Ms Walker’s clinic has to send a letter back to the referring GP or another specialist, so there is a huge network they have to make sure is constantly updated so the right documentation is going to the right place.
“For us to have up to date details, and for our referring doctors to have up to date information on us, is really critical, and vital for efficiency,” said Ms Walker.
Joining to local hospital networks
Some public hospitals are already using the NHSD, so when the PCA updates NHSD and then that updates the public hospitals, it all adds to the accuracy of local provider connectivity.
The Agency is also working directly with a number of public hospital networks to directly integrate with PCA which will provide those hospitals with extra capability in talking to their local provider ecosystem.
EHealth New South Wales has already integrated PCA into its internal provider directory and has commenced integrating the same information into all of the patient administration systems across the state, so that all of them are also kept up to date.
The Agency also has ongoing discussions with state and territory jurisdictions to integrate the service in a similar manner to their hospital networks and is talking to all the major pathology and imaging providers across the country about PCA integration.
Ms Walker said another reason providers now might want to consider the PCA was that the whole user experience of registering and updating had improved significantly since she first signed her practice on.
Game changer – network effect
The very nature of PCA and its continuous improvements and enhancements, enables comprehensive and up-to-date real-time updates to directories and other partners. This in turn will create a network effect – the more providers PCA, the more useful for other providers and business partners.
For more information on Provider Connect Australia, click HERE or email digitaladoptionsupport@digitalhealth.gov.au for support to start the process to register with PCA.
This article was written by Health Services Daily on behalf of the Australian Digital Health Agency as a promotion of Provider Connect Australia