Greg Twyford wrote:
Colleagues,
I'm posting this on behalf of one of my Division colleagues:
hi all,
Our division is attempting to get behind one of these two applications
to try to standardise our practices. I would greatly appreciate any
information on which of these products you are using including any
feedback you have received, pre or post implementation.
My practice has installed both products. My experience of using them is:
1. For receiving letters and other messages, they both work in that they
both deliver incoming letters to my clinical inbox.
I have found that test letters that I sent to myself via Medical Objects
lose all formatting (e.g. in my practice letterhead) and also don't
transmit my scanned handwritten signature that is part of my letter
template. I haven't received letters from anybody else yet via MO as
far as I know (apart from a test message from MO), so I don't know
whether the loss of formatting is peculiar to letters that I send via MO
or whether this will happen to letters from everybody else too.
Argus preserves the formatting and images in letters that I have
received, including test ones from myself - including my practice's
letterhead and my scanned in signature.
2. For sending letters, the processes differ because of the different
ways in which each package works.
Medical Objects:
The Medical Objects client Trinity is called each time you copy a piece
of text. For me, this has turned out to be a nuisance when I am copying
text for reasons other than wanting to send a letter via Medical
Objects. Because of this, I keep the MO client closed unless I actually
want to send a letter via MO, in which case I have to start the MO
client manually.
Having copied the text of a letter to send, you paste the text of the
letter into the MO send window that has been called by the act of
copying the text (or in my case, which I have opened manually). You
then have to enter the name of the doctor or other person to whom you
are sending your letter. There is a facility to search the MO server
for the person that you want. You then also have to enter the patient's
name and date of birth by typing them in each time - there is no
facility to store these details so that they can be chosen from a list,
or to look up the practice's database of patients. Once these details
are completed, you hit 'send', at which point you are asked to digitally
sign the letter by entering the password for your individual iKey
dongle that you have already plugged in to a USB port. The letter is
then sent.
Argus:
Write the letter, hit 'email' which calls the Argus client, check that
the letter has been encrypted and hit 'send'. Argus already knows the
name and Argus email address of the recipient, and the patient's name
and date of birth, because these are already in special purpose lines of
text in the letter, having been put there automatically as part of the
letter template.
In summary, my personal experience has been that Argus is better at
transmitting letters in the format in which they were prepared, and that
Argus is quicker and easier to use for sending letters. I am writing
this from memory at home. If I have misrepresented or misreported any
of the steps or the results of using either system, I apologise and
invite corrections.
One thing that I would like both packages to facilitate is some way of
telling us automatically when new local users start using either system,
so that we will know that we can write to them via that messaging
system. It would also be useful if Argus could somehow update our
Medical Director address book automatically with new users' special
purpose Argus email addresses. I understand that technically this is
difficult or impossible, so for now, it means that I have to keep using
Argus Messenger on our server to find new users' Argus email addresses
(or new Argus email addresses of existing users), and copy them into the
Medical Director address book one by one.
My Division (Adelaide North East) has been promoting Argus to its
members and to medical specialists, allied health professionals and
residential aged care facilities. To date 78 GPs in the Division have
installed Argus, representing 36% of the Division's membership. A
number of medical specialist practices, including the two large
cardiology groups in Adelaide, a pharmacy, a physiotherapy practice and
others have installed Argus. The Adelaide North East Division is about
to closely survey its members who have installed Argus to seek their
feedback about their experience of installing and using Argus and its
benefits and costs.
Other Divisions in Adelaide are also promoting Argus and helping their
members to install it. I believe that the Adelaide Western GP Network
(formerly Adelaide Western Division of General Practice) may be
promoting Medical Objects to its members. I don't know why it prefers
Medical Objects to Argus, or how closely it looked at Argus before
deciding to prefer Medical Objects.
I believe that a number of government and private health care and
health-related organisations, such as Workcover Corporation,
Breastscreen SA, the SA Cervix Screening Backup Register, home nursing
agencies and the State-owned pathology service are looking at installing
Argus to use for their communication with GPs.
Of course it makes no sense that all of the messaging providers except
Argus paradoxically discourage and inhibit free communication by
preventing users of their system from being able to communicate with
users of any other clinical messaging system. We need a user of any
clinical messaging system to be to communicate with any user of any
other clinical messaging system. I understand that there has recently
been a meeting of the clinical messaging providers to address this
obvious need, but I haven't heard about what happened at that meeting.
--
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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