Dear Colleagues,
I am pleased to report that I have now sent referrals to and been
receiving replies from two medical specialists via Argus, with more
about to start.
To send my referrals, I write my referral letter as usual in my clinical
software, choose 'email' from the letter writer menu, Argus Mail
automatically encrypts it as an HL7 message, and away it goes. No more
phone call charges to fax it from the computer, nor costs of printing
and posting it, nor the costs of printing and giving it to the patient.
Hooray!
The specialists' replies just appear in my clinical inbox, where I read
them like I do test results, mark them as read, and they are filed away
automatically into the patient's record, just like test results. Our
receptionists don't have to spend time opening envelopes, stamping the
letters as 'received', putting them into my paper inbox and then
scanning them, nor do they have to spend time distributing and filing
faxed letters (we receive faxed documents as images attached to email
messages, so they don't have to be printed and scanned). In fact, our
receptionists don't even need to know that the specialists' letters via
Argus have arrived. It's not that we want to keep it secret from them,
it's just that we don't want their time being taken up with things that
they really don't need to deal with, and incoming specialists' letters
is one of those things. This is a really great saving of our
receptionists' time and therefore of our practice expenses.
We are now about to move to the next stage. I am expecting during this
week to start receiving pathology results via Argus from Clinpath, which
is the Adelaide laboratory owned by Sonic Healthcare. Once this starts,
I will be able to start reducing the number of result downloading
clients on our server, by removing Clinpath's own downloading software
from it. Clinpath's and Sonic's support for and use of Argus has led me
to change to Clinpath as my preferred pathology provider.
I understand that Sonic has been supporting the development and
implementation of Argus for some time, and has been trying to get its
fellow pathology practices and also the medical imaging practices to
contribute to the costs of supporting Argus. I believe that to date
these others have not contributed, despite their interest in changing to
using Argus rather than continuing with the commercial messaging systems
that they are currently paying significant amounts to use. Sonic is now
feeling a bit lonely in paying to support Argus, which will benefit
everybody, while none of the other current and potential beneficiaries
have contributed.
ArgusConnect and its current and potential sponsors need active support
now from users and potential users of Argus. When I told my former
preferred pathology provider (the State owned Institute of Medical and
Veterinary Science) that I was changing to Clinpath/Sonic because
Clinpath is supporting and using Argus, I received an immediate strong
reaction from IMVS. Clearly pathology and imaging practices are very
sensitive to anything that may influence their market share.
For those of us who have a choice in pathology and medical imaging
providers, our most powerful way of supporting Argus and helping to
increase its use is to choose to use the pathology and imaging providers
that are supporting and using Argus, and to make sure that we tell those
providers and their competitors why we are doing this. We need to put
our clinical practice where our mouth is, by showing our pathology,
imaging and medical specialist colleagues that we regard improved
electronic communication and the use of the available open source
not-for-profit Australian product as so important that it influences our
choice of provider. If we don't do this, we will have only ourselves to
blame if we find that we have to depend on profit-making commercial
messaging providers to send our clinical messages.
--
Oliver Frank, general practitioner
255 North East Road, Hampstead Gardens, South Australia 5086
Phone 08 8261 1355 Fax 08 8266 5149 Mobile 0407 181 683
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