Towards a digitally connected health care system
Provider Connect Australia is a streamlined system which ensures service and clinician details stay up to date in online directories, helping patients find the care they need.
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Healthcare providers rely on many business partners including other clinicians, funders, Primary Health Networks, hospitals, health service directories and diagnostic services to support their service delivery.
In most cases, business partners require the provider to manually register details of the services they provide and the practitioners who provide them. Registering these details with partners and keeping them up-to-date is often incredibly time consuming, open to human error and inefficient. However, if they aren’t updated, there’s a roll-on effect to consumers seeking care.
For example; if a GP leaves a general practice, the practice manager will need to notify each of the business partners to support appropriate referrals and online information seeking. If these details aren’t updated, someone searching an online directory may attempt to book with a practitioner who no longer works there, which could delay treatment and cause frustration for the consumer.
To create a more streamlined approach, the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) developed an integrated system, Provider Connect Australia (PCA), which enables details to be entered into one platform that communicates and syncronises with business partners’ platforms. For this to be successful, healthcare providers and business partners need to be on the PCA system.
Recognising the ability of this innovative system to improve the delivery and experience of healthcare, SEMPHN collaborated with the ADHA to find and support pilot healthcare services in south east Melbourne during the first stages of the PCA roll out. In addition to SEMPHN’s Digital Health Officers, our dedicated Provider Support Officers have close relationships with local practices, which helped the Digital Health team to successfully engage 17 general practices, pharmacies, medical specialists and allied health services to pilot the first phase in January and February 2023.
After setting up PCA, one pilot site had chosen to publish their information to secure messaging company which resulted in a swift response to update their records to reflect their current service.
Angela Eklund, Digital Health Lead at SEMPHN, says this project will increase operational efficiency for services and build better health system integration using digital tools.
“Offering early access to the new system through a pilot phase provided an opportunity for service staff to familiarise themselves with the technology, share feedback and consider its integration into their operations. By working collaboratively with the Australian Digital Health Agency and our providers, we hope to improve the quality and reliability of healthcare service details in referral databases and local directories, while also significantly reducing the administrative burden on healthcare providers.”
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Angela Eklund, Digital Health Lead at SEMPHN
PCA was officially launched on 1 July 2023 and is now available for all healthcare providers to register.
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