Hi everyone,
I thought I'd add some specific comments in response to Hugh Nelson's question.....
"Hi Tom,
The key thing that will let GP's get on with their core business with regard to messaging will be when specialist and hospital reports arrive in our inboxes the same way that pathology and xray reports do.
Any solution that gets that working is going to get GP's business.
What is your approach to getting the hospitals and specialists to actually SEND clinical reports electronically?"
Hugh,
We are absolutely passionate about this and in NZ have more than 2.5 million items being sent annually between GPs and hospitals, midwives, specialists and other providers using a messaging type "RSD" (Referrals, Status Reports and Discharge summaries). It uses an HL7 message between the systems of the above providers. To be frank, without it our health system would be in a real pickle. 2.5 million items in a population of 4 million is a huge amount. Every GP system in the country uses this system routinely.
In Australia we have implemented this system in several places and have been working closely with the practice management system vendors to achieve a tight integration with them. Most recently we have been awarded a contract by WA Health to roll this out across WA, expanding on a successful pilot with Royal Perth Hospital. we also have a contract to do the same in Queensland (with Queensland Health) and we are working with clusters of specialists plus some hospitals in various parts of the country including North Queensland, rural and urban Victoria and Tasmania. Several other state Health Departments have indicated a keen interest.
We are working with NEHTA, HESA plus our colleagues at e-Clinic and medical Objects to develop interoperability and things are progressing well on that front, so don't expect issues there.
It is a slow but methodical approach that is required to implement RSD and the key issues are;
(i) to develop highly robust and dependable systems that are capable of working reliably in a range of different environments and with a multiplicity of systems
(ii) to design a system that becomes part of the hospitals'/specialists' workflow (not something additional for them to do).
(iii) to have in place very effective technical integration with a number of vendors, enabling full use of the HL7 message acknowledgement system (from the recipient's application, not just from the messaging system). This gives the robustness required to enable all participants to truly depend on a paperless system.
(iv) to have in place viable business relationships with the practice management system vendors that mean they will actively support high quality electronic messaging rather than view it as a cost imposed upon them.
(v) to select appropriately motivated specialists and hospitals to work with, people who will work actively with us to get the gremlins out of the system, rather than expect someone else to do all the work
Once ALL of the above building blocks are firmly in place it becomes a very simple decision for Specialists and Hospitals to send information electronically to GPs and vice versa. Why would you do it any other way? In NZ we are getting month on month growth of 5% per month use of RSD, but it was a huge job to put all of the above building blocks in place (and we are still fine tuning).
It is also taking time to get this formula exactly right in Australia. But good things take time and good things done well add huge value to a health system that needs all the help it can get. I am forecasting that we (and our partners) will have RSD working on a widespread basis all over Australia within the next 12 months.
Kind regards,
Tom Bowden CEO HealthLink Ltd
_______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
