- Nigel Faull (Star Gardens) for his induction into the ITAC Hall of Fame
- Star Gardens for their high commendation for best implementation under 150 beds
- McKenzie Aged Care Group for best implementation over 650 beds
- The Salvation Army – Aged Care Plus for their high commendation for best implementation over 650 beds

Winner – Hall of Fame: Nigel Faull (Star Gardens)

Nigel Faull, CEO of Star Gardens in Beaudesert, Qld, became the newest inductee into the ITAC Hall of Fame. As CEO of Star Gardens since 2005, Nigel has implemented numerous IT solutions at their 77 bed facility including iCare’s Clinical, Care and Medication Management Solution as well as the Medical Director link.

The IT solutions implemented have helped Star Gardens improve workflow efficiencies, manage risk and achieve organisational growth.

High Commendation – The Salvation Army – Aged Care Plus: Best Implementation over 650 beds

The Salvation Army – Aged Care Plus (TSAACP) underwent a significant change management process which involved electronically linking facilities, pharmacies and visiting GPs, to reduce the risk of error in administering medications for their aged care residents.

TSAACP are the largest aged care provider to successfully implement an electronic medication management system in Australia and have proven how the use of smart technology combined with excellent change management can significantly improve health care outcomes for residents.

Click here to download TSAACP case study on their implementation of iCare’s Medication Management System.

Murray to Moyne Cycling Relay 2012

Recently, Villa Maria, one of Melbourne’s largest providers of disability, education and aged care services, entered a team to participate in a 300km cycle relay challenge to raise money for a new playground for the student’s at Villa Maria’s specialist school St Pauls College.

Demonstrating iCare’s support, iCare employees, Cathy Purdon and Junaid Qazi, formed part of Villa Maria’s team and participated in the relay.

iCare would like to congratulate Villa Maria, Cathy and Junaid on their efforts.

(Cathy Purdon and Junaid Qazi)

The Salvation Army – Aged Care Plus (TSAACP) are the largest aged care provider to successfully implement an electronic medication management system. Are you interested in how you can:

- Reduce medication errors,
- Reduce administrative burden, and
- Implement a successful change management program?

Luke Greive, Operations Manager at TSAACP, who has extensive experience in aged care and implementing IT solutions, will be sharing TSAACP’s experience and outcomes achieved at ITAC next week.

When: Thursday, 19th April, 2012
Time: 11.00am – Session 1C
Where: ITAC 2012 – Melbourne Park Function Centre

Click here to view the complete ITAC program.

July 1 is Pending – Australian Aging Agenda, March/April 2012

(Journalist: Dale Fisher)

With only months to go until the July 1 deadline for the launch of the Government’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), Chris Gray, Managing Director at iCare, Lisa Pettigrew, Director for Health Services at CSC and Dr Mukkesh Haikerwal, National Clinical Lead for NeHTA share their thoughts on the program thus far, what it will mean for older Australian’s and aged care providers and how to start preparing for the launch now.

Download article: July 1 is pending

In preparation for the 1st July, 2012 when the Federal Government launches the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), NeHTA, on behalf of the Governments of Australia, is hitting the road to share the eHealth story.

The Model Healthcare Community (MHC) is an eHealth engagement tool that provides an interactive and dynamic display, showcasing the NeHTA eHealth foundations and solutions.

With one permanent display in Melbourne, NeHTA is taking the installation on the road and touring around Australia from March 2012.

The mobile installation will provide a guided tour that will inform and educate healthcare providers of the key elements of eHealth and NeHTA’s foundation programs. The tour will focus on ‘Frank’s’ eHealth journey and how Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHIs), common clinical language, secure transmission of information and messages and document templates and standards can improve the quality and safety of the healthcare ‘Frank’ receives.

Who should attend?

• Allied health, dental and pharmaceutical organisations
• Clinicians, nurses, health practitioners and service providers
• Consumers and carer groups
• Healthcare industry associations
• ICT software industry
• Peak bodies and professional colleges
• Private and public healthcare organisations

In line with NeHTA’s foundation programs to enable eHealth in Australia, iCare’s next major software release, version 2.10 (available next month, April 2012), will deliver Healthcare Identifier functionality, preparing iCare customer’s to be eHealth ready.

Download the NEHTA Model Healthcare Truck Roadshow Invite

For more information visit:

• The Model Healthcare Community Roadshow is Coming to You
• eHealth mobile display truck starts national tour at Altona North, Victoria

If you have any questions regarding eHealth please contact iCare on 03 9652 8100 or via email at ehealth@icare.com.au.

Journalist: Kate McDonald, Pulse+IT

The MedView medications repository project is fast approaching deployment and already has some runs on the board.

If there is one area that eHealth can assist in more than most, it is the ability to help doctors and pharmacists make informed decisions concerning an individual’s medication history. That is one of the driving forces behind the MedView Wave 2 project, which is aimed at providing a consolidated view of medications so that pharmacies and GPs have the ability to call up a profile and make more informed decisions about prescribing and dispensing.

MedView is one of the more integrated projects in the Wave 2 round in that it is developing a national repository that will allow clinicians, pharmacists, aged care facilities and hospitals to see a combined list of prescribed and dispensed medications regardless of how many different doctors or pharmacies the patient has attended.

Bringing together software vendors from each of those areas – primary care, aged care and acute care – the project is utilising the existing eRx Script Exchange electronic prescription platform as well as partnering with number of different software vendors. These include GP software providers Best Practice and Zedmed, pharmacy software vendors Fred, Simple Aquarius and Pharmhos, aged care software specialist iCare, and acute care prescribing and dispensing systems BOSSnet and Merlin.

The initial MedView trial will focus on the geographic area of Geelong, and is aiming to involve every pharmacy in that city and a significant proportion of GPs, along with Geelong Hospital and targeted aged care facilities. Working in close partnership with the Barwon Medicare Local, MedView’s momentum is rapidly building towards deployment commencing in February.

And more recently, the Australian Association of Practice Managers (AAPM) has joined the project and will promote it to members as a practical means of providing patient benefit within their practice.

Software integrated with HI Service

Progress to date has been rapid, according to David Freemantle, general manager for eHealth at Fred IT Group and the lead spokesperson for the MedView project.

Part of the work has involved ensuring that aged care and acute care software is integrating the Health Identifiers Service (HI Service), as is being done by GP desktop and pharmacy dispensing software providers. And the core medications information is being enabled by electronic transfer of prescriptions (ETP) using the services of eRx Script Exchange.

“It is such a basic concept, really,” Mr Freemantle says. “Pharmacies have been using computerised dispensing systems for 20 years but they’ve never been able to look at a consolidated history of medications for a patient. It has really been enabled by ETP.”

The project is using NEHTA-defined standards and service including secure messaging, HL7 CDA (clinical document architecture), Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT) and various others.

However, one of the prime roles of the project is the integration of the HI Service. To date, all of the vendors involved in the project have passed their Compliance, Conformance and Accreditation (CCA) testing, Mr Freemantle says. GP software vendors have been working on this for some time through the GP Software Vendors Panel, and through this project, individual healthcare identifier (IHI) functionality is being driven in the pharmacy, acute and aged care software sectors as well.

IHIs are also included in the eRx messages transmitted between clinical systems, he says.

“The HI Service is integrated at the GP and pharmacy desktop ends – after authenticating the user, the clinical system authenticates the patient’s IHI and add it to their patient record. The only real change in eRx from the ETP side is that it will now be able to transfer that IHI and a consent flag for MedView participation.

“eRx will see the consent flag and a copy of the prescription and dispense records will be sent to MedView through the standard ETP process. When a GP or a pharmacist is wanting to view the record in MedView, using their clinical system they initiate a query of MedView with the click of a button. Based on the patient’s IHI, the medications data is then displayed in the MedView viewer, which provides the ability to filter, sort and save the view.”

Consent matters

Patient consent is an area many involved in eHealth are working on, and it will be a big issue in the eventual PCEHR. For this project, patient consent is again captured within the pharmacy and GP desktop systems, Mr Freemantle says.

“The doctors and pharmacists will ask for the patient’s consent to send the information to MedView. The patients likely to benefit most are the elderly, infirm or chronically ill, most of whom have a long-term relationship with their healthcare providers and a consistent care team, who will capture consent.

“We’re in the transitional planning process with NEHTA to investigate the transition into the national PCEHR. MedView is a relatively localised trial which will demonstrate the capabilities of the system and the technologies, with the next step being integration to the national PCEHR.” The project is currently completing vendor integration testing.

“We are in testing at the moment,” Mr Freemantle says. “We have a test system up and running that can demonstrate full integration through the ETP process, the HI Service at Medicare for the patient IHI, capture patient consent and then view a medications history in MedView for that patient. This is the pointy end of the project and it is great to see the hard work starting to pay off!”

The process of recruitment will speed up, along with deployment throughout Geelong. The goal is to have the pharmacies in Geelong along with all of the GP practices using Best Practice and Zedmed recruited to the project.

Also involved is Geelong Hospital, which uses the BOSSnet prescribing system and the Merlin dispensing system, and an aged care facility, which is being assisted by iCare.

Dr Chaolin Chang, product strategy and development manager with iCare, says the MedView project is extremely important for the aged care sector for a number reasons.

“This is a health initiative that is designed to improve resident health outcomes,” Dr Chang says. “It will create a national, conformant medicines repository that provides the ability to view a combined record of community prescribed and dispensed medications for residents.”

For aged care facilities, it will allow medications to be managed to ensure safe and effective outcomes, reduce errors and medication risk and reduce adverse drug events, including medication dispensing errors, he says.

“There will be access to medication information at the point of care which will give healthcare providers a real-time view of medication information,” he says.

“This provides a more complete basis for decision-making, improved communication between clinicians and ensures appropriate follow-up after discharge from hospital.”

iCare has completed the work necessary to add Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) functionality to its software, and is currently working with a residential aged care facility (RACF) in the pilot phase. RACFs will have to apply for a HPI-O and potentially a HPI-I, but all care staff will be trained on the use of healthcare identifiers, Dr Chang says.

“It is important that residents’ privacy is assured and we are working to a strict resident consent model.”

He says that when a resident is first admitted to a facility and who has previously consented to having their medicines information submitted to the MedView medicines repository, the GP will be able to look up all previous medications prescribed by other authorised doctors. “This will bring benefits to the resident including reducing unnecessary repetition of information and filling out forms, repeating their history and avoiding unnecessary risks in their medications as well as transfers and discharge.”

David Freemantle says this is an interesting project to work on because there are a number of dependencies that are out of the control of the trial partners that could make it or break it.

“The technology works and we have now demonstrated that, but it is the dependencies on external services and specifications – such as Healthcare Provider Identifiers (HPI-I and HPI-O) – that we have limited control over that creates a challenge,” he says.

“We are actively involved in assisting practices and pharmacies to apply for their HPI-O and HPI-I at a later stage, but it can be a slow process. As practitioners and patients build their understanding of the benefits of such systems, I’m sure these issues will gradually iron themselves out.”

It is also pointing the way to the future, when the infrastructure requirements of eHealth are going to become enormous, he says. “The infrastructure requirements are going to grow rapidly as data increases exponentially across the whole PCEHR system.”

To view the February, 2012 edition of Pulse IT Magazine visit:
http://www.pulseitmagazine.com.au/february2012 [see page 40- 43 for the MedView article]

2012 is set to be a busy year in eHealth with the launch of the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) only 5 months away. From July, 2012 all Australians can opt-in and register for a Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR).

The PCEHR will provide a consolidated view of health information which can be shared with trusted healthcare practitioners. This will enable more rapid access to up to date health information for the right people at the right time.

The following short videos explain the benefits eHealth will bring, for you as an individual and for aged care:

eHealth: What it means for me – click here.

eHealth for Aged Care – click here.

iCare is committed to the Government’s eHealth strategy and is developing key eHealth enablers, such as Individual Healthcare Identifiers, in our software so they are available in our next major release, version 2.10 in April 2012.

MedView Update

As we have discussed in previous eHealth updates, iCare is the aged care partner for the Government’s eHealth MedView project. We were pleased to see recently that the Australian Association of Practice Managers (AAPM) has announced that they are partnering with MedView and eRx in recognition of their importance to Australia’s eHealth future.

National President of the AAPM, Brett McPherson, said “The AAPM is joining the MedView project and endorsing eRx because of their integral role in Australia’s eHealth future. MedView represents a tremendous advance in medicines management, and ePrescribing is a vital link in the secure sharing of consented data required to achieve this. The practice management profession has a long history of leadership in healthcare management, and we now have a significant opportunity to dramatically advance medicines management and help shape Australia’s eHealth future.”

To read the complete media release click here.

2011 has been a busy year in the eHealth space in preparation for the launch of the Federal Government’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) in July, 2012.

The impact of legislation passed in 2010 that enabled the use of Healthcare Identifiers (HIs) – unique 16 digit numbers that will guarantee the identification of sensitive health information of an individual – became a reality in 2011 with projects such as MedView.

MedView will see consented patient’s consolidated medication histories made available to pharmacies, GPs, hospitals and aged care facilities. IHI’s will ensure the right health information is associated with the right individual in this repository.

To further support current and future eHealth implementations in aged care, the National eHealth Transition Authority (NeHTA) has called for expressions of interests from aged care software developers to establish a vendor panel. Financial assistance will be offered to successful panellists who will be required to upgrade their existing software to provide the required functionality to meet NeHTA specifications.

This will help ensure aged care providers have the right information, software and tools to take advantage of the efficiencies and opportunities eHealth and the launch of the PCEHR will provide.

Click here to read the complete article.

On a final note, in 2012 it is iCare’s 10th birthday and we look forward to celebrating this milestone with you and keeping you up to date on eHealth developments throughout the year.