Oliver, Thanks for you comment. You have interpreted my question correctly which was basically "at which step in the chain can the sender say that it has fulfilled its responsibility to deliver its result".
It appears that a standard does need to be in place not only for end to end messaging to occur but also for a system to check that results have been received for orders placed. It would need the GP software vendors to come on board with this. Such a move would reduce the overhead for Practices to check this manually no doubt. Some applications do provide ACKs back though the system to the DS provider but this is not ubiquitous. Chris. -----Original Message----- From: Oliver Frank [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, 10 March 2007 9:14 PM To: General Practice Computing Group Talk; Chris Scott Subject: Re: [GPCG_TALK] Messaging Responsibilities Chris Scott wrote: > What is the 'lists' understanding of whose legal responsibility it is > to monitor the receipt of inbound messages (Path, DI, DS etc) into > Practice software from download applications? > Chris, I think that you are you asking about where the boundary is between the sender's (e.g. pathology or medical imaging practice) responsibility to deliver its results to the requester, and the requester's responsibility to read the result and take whatever appropriate action he or she feels is appropriate, At which step in the chain can the sender say that it has fulfilled its responsibility to deliver its result? If the result is delivered on paper by courier, it is the courier's record of having delivered the results to the practice that certifies that the result was delivered. (But does the courier list in detail which results were actually delivered, or merely that he or she stopped at the practice and delivered any results and maybe collected some specimens as well?). If the result on paper is posted to the practice by ordinary mail, there may be no confirmation of delivery. If the result is faxed to the practice, presumably a 'successful transmission' confirmation from the fax machine or fax system certifies that the result was delivered. If the result is delivered by an electronic clinical messaging system, the sender would be looking for an ACK message that confirms that the result was delivered to the download client on the practice's computer system. What happens to it after that is not the sender's responsibility. > It appears that generally download applications will normally notify > the sender of receipt. The GP clinical software may or may not be set > up or capable to pass acknowledgement back through the system to the > sender. That's my understanding, but somebody else on the list may know more. What are you asking about here? Are you asking whether our clinical software will confirm that it has picked up the message from wherever in our practice computer system the download client has put it, or are you asking about acknowledgement that a doctor has read the result, notified the patient of it and taken appropriate action about it? I think if you ask the the pathology and medical imaging practices, they will have some pretty definite views about where their responsibility ends and the recipient's responsibility starts. -- 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 NOTICE - This message (including any attached files) is intended only for the use of the addressee named above and may contain privileged and confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you must not disseminate, copy or take any action based upon it. If you received this message in error please notify the Hunter Urban Division of General Practice immediately (+61 2 4925 2259). Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of the Hunter Urban Division of General Practice. _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
