Author: Lauren Turner
Sydney LHD roll-out SmartForm e-Referrals to 58 clinics and services
After a successful e-Referral rollout, Sydney Local Health District is not looking back.
Sydney Local Health District has continued the roll out of e-Referral to 58 clinics and services, enabling more than 260 local general practices to refer to Sydney Local Health District ambulatory care services using HealthLink SmartForms.
We caught up with Paul Bennett, Program Manager HealthPathways Sydney and e-Referral Project, and Sarah Friend, e-Referral Project Officer, to hear more about the journey.
Why did Sydney Local Health District introduce GP e-Referrals?
The project was established to improve the quality and safety of referral processes, through the introduction of secure electronic referral processes. Following a successful pilot in 2018 and investigating what e-Referral systems were available, Sydney Local Health District determined HealthLink was the optimal platform for general practice referrals to our ambulatory care services. Paul Bennett noted: “The added benefit was that general practitioners were already using HealthLink SmartForms to refer to other hospitals and organisations, so all roads led to Sydney Local Health District working with HealthLink to expand the availability of e-Referral in general practice.”
For Sydney Local Health District, e-Referral aims to play a role in transforming a patient’s transition from primary to secondary care by enabling referrals to be securely sent, reducing the reliance on legacy communication systems including fax.
The introduction of e-Referral is not just about efficiency and quality, but ease of use, avoiding wastage and minimising patient delay to accessing ambulatory care services. General practitioners now receive acknowledgement the referral has been received by the Sydney Local Health District service, which gives them and their patients peace of mind, and reduces time with referrers no longer having to follow up or generate multiple referrals.
How has HealthLink’s SmartForms technology supported GP referrals?
The introduction of e-Referral has supported general practice on a number of fronts. The e-Referral Project Team explained, “as referrals are integrated into general practitioners’ practice software, it makes it easier to connect and autopopulate the referral with patient demographic and clinical information, saving the GP time and ensuring the referral is made to the correct service.”
HealthLink SmartForms support GP referrals by providing a system acknowledgment message noting service receipt of the referral. They also receive messages on whether the referral is accepted or declined. Paul Bennett added: “All e-Referrals align with the locally relevant HealthPathways, which supports GPs with clinical decision support and service information and facilitates the transfer of key diagnostic information, minimising repeat pathology and radiology investigations and time. The synergy between e-Referral and HealthPathways Sydney, enables consistent and standardised information between the two general practice facing platforms. This has been a key focus for Sydney Local Health District e-Referral implementations since the project’s inception.
Victoria SmartForms statewide rollout – North Western Melbourne PHN
Background: In 2016, the journey to e-Referrals began with the National Digital Health Strategy. Now, five years later, Victoria has successfully rolled out e-Referrals statewide. We caught up with some of the PHNs who have been behind the rollout to reflect on the journey that has brought them to this successful outcome.
Sarah O’Leary
Director of Integrated Care | North Western Melbourne PHN
When and why did North Western Melbourne PHN introduce GP e-Referrals?
North Western Melbourne PHN’s (NWMPHN) role has been supporting the change management that was required to implement e-Referrals. This included identifying the change management that was needed to support general practice teams to manage e-Referrals within their workflows.
We advocate on behalf of general practice to the hospitals and health services to ensure they consider the role of general practice in their e-Referral process. For example, Northern Health, who works with HealthLink, planned to transition to an e-Referral process. NWMPHN supported communication and education sessions with GPs in our region who were affected by this change.
For e-Referral to work it requires systems in place at both the hospital and GP end. Most GPs now have compliant software and we are seeing more and more hospitals with electronic systems, so we are hopeful that it will be more common in our region in the future.
How has HealthLink’s SmartForms technology supported GP e-Referral?
E-Referral is the transfer of information. For the process to really work it needs agreement from hospitals, specialists and GPs on what information is required for a referral to be accepted. HealthLink SmartForms have specialist referral criteria integrated into the form so the GP doesn’t need to leave the form to check the criteria.
How have GPs across Melbourne and your referrer catchment adopted this solution?
Anecdotally we can say when the hospitals moved to e-Referrals, it went well.
What is the great benefit GPs have received by using the new eReferrals ?
The integration of the process to align with the GP’s workflow. HealthLink has connected the Specialist Referral Criteria into the workflow so the GP doesn’t have to go outside the referral form to check what is needed for the referral and then go back in. It’s all integrated.
Based on your current experience, would you ever go back to life before GP eReferrals?
As a health system, no.
To start using GP e-Referrals, check out our HealthLink SmartForm user guides for:
- Best Practice
- Genie Solutions
- Medical Director 3.16 and Above
New e-Referral form for Onsite Ultrasound
Locally owned and operated Onsite Ultrasound has been providing high-quality ultrasound services for people in Hawke’s Bay for 14 years.
E-Referrals can now be made to Onsite Ultrasound using CareSelect.
Onsite Ultrasound practice manager Kelly Fraser says the new tailor-made e-Referral form will help make the pathway easier for doctors to refer patients.
“The e-Referral form is quick and easy to use, saves time and is way more secure compared to faxing, emailing, phoning or handing a patient a paper referral,” she says.
“E-Referrals are definitely the way forward.”
Onsite Ultrasound has a team of 10 people and operates out of two sites – one in Napier and one in Hastings.
“We provide high-quality ultrasound services using the latest technology and equipment,” Kelly says.
Services on offer include pregnancy, general abdominal, small parts, pelvic, vascular, obstetric and musculoskeletal scans. Ultrasound-guided cortisone injections are also available.
Kelly says customer service is a big focus for the small, friendly team.
“Our team provides high-quality imaging alongside great customer service with friendly faces every step of the way.”
Urgent reports available
Kelly says urgent reports are available within the hour if required.
“Our general wait times for scans is minimal and we also put aside appointments every day for urgent cases should they arise,” she says.
“We also get our reports out as soon as possible after a scan has been completed.”
Free ACC scans are also available for patients who qualify (a surcharge applies for radiologist procedures).
“We’ve had lots of positive feedback over the years and pride ourselves on the high-quality service we provide and our friendly team.”
How to refer to Onsite Ultrasound:
- open the patient record
- select the HealthLink icon
- use the CareSelect search bar, type “Onsite Ultrasound”
- click “Compose Referral”.
Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust implements new Emergency Whiteboard
Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has implemented a brand-new process for patients arriving in the emergency department using a new electronic scheduling whiteboard.
The scheme, implemented in early July, sees patients arriving in the emergency department added to the Whiteboard immediately by emergency coordinators. The team can then add patients to appropriate theatre slots as needed, make quick scheduling changes and retain complete oversight of patient location, treatment status, CEPOD status and extra quality improvement goals known as CQUINs.
The Emergency Whiteboard, from Bluespier, is also fully integrated with the Trust’s EPR, Careflow. After patients are scheduled via the drag and drop functionality into the appropriate theatre slot on the Whiteboard, the central patient record housed in Careflow links automatically with the event, ensuring one accurate patient care record without the need to duplicate information.
Once scheduled for surgery, patients remain on the Whiteboard until staff make the decision to officially discharge, ensuring patients remain visible to care teams throughout their entire episode of care and staff have a true visual of the current resources of the emergency department.
Ben Jolly, Clinical Lead in Theatres at Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust: “The Bluespier Emergency Whiteboard has helped improve the organisation of patients booked onto the emergency theatre list. It allows us to plan patient care better and improve the care and experience that our patients receive.
Stuart van Rooyen, Managing Director at Bluespier, said: “This has been an excellently executed project thanks to the talent and diligence of the Trust staff, Bluespier and System C representatives. The majority of the implementation was managed remotely due to current restrictions but the excellent communication between teams ensured this went live without a hitch.”
“We understand the pressures that hospitals are under and are very proud that our solutions can help improve efficiency and ultimately patient care within high pressure environments.”
After just one month’s use, 203 patients have successfully been admitted via the Emergency Whiteboard.
Save Hours Each Month With Trusted Dosages
Your team could save hours each month with our new Trusted Dosages feature!
What is Trusted Dosages?
You may remember that we introduced this new feature in our August release. This new feature allows RxWeb to convert many of the common GP text Strings to a Trusted Dosage mapping.
For Example, in 3 months across our environment, the downloaded GP Dosage of ‘1 nocte’ occurred 30931 times.
This would usually be changed to ‘ONE to be Taken at NIGHT’. Further analysis showed hundreds of variants of codes that essentially meant the same thing e.g. take one daily, One To Be Taken Each Day, 1 TABLET ONCE A DAY, take one once daily, TAKE ONE DAILY, ONE TO BE TAKEN DAILY, 1 OD, One To Be Taken Daily, 1 TABLET ONCE DAILY occurred 855420 times.
All of these are essentially ‘ONE to be Taken DAILY’.
RxWeb has had a pharmacist prepare a system mapping table of the commonly seen dosages strings to a clear and consistent instruction. This is also something you can manage yourself if you choose to. If you don’t think our mappings fit your requirements you can create your own.
The Impact
Since its launch back in August, Trusted Dosages has had a major impact on the customers using it, helping them to save hours each month whilst improving the clinical safety of manually entering dosage syntax. We have estimated that on average, a successfully mapped item saves a pharmacist about 3 seconds in checks and changes.
Although feedback from users would suggest that this is a very conservative estimate with many saying that they are probably saving 4-5 seconds per item.
So how do those saved seconds translate? Well, in the below table we have outlined exactly how many seconds, minutes, and hours we’ve saved Trusted Dosage users in the past month.
Trusted Dosages has saved our customers over 1,246 hours of work in the first month of use. This equates to a saving of almost 3 hours per site, per month. And it’s worth noting that these numbers are set to increase substantially as we have now increased the number of Trusted Dosage mappings from 300 to over 1000.
How to enable Trusted Dosages on your system
Trusted Dosage can be switched on in system configurations. From the menu at the top of your screen go to System/System Configuration and select the options shown under Categories and Sub Categories. Highlight the line ‘Use Trusted Dosage Conversion’ and change the value at the bottom to ‘Yes’ and then press ‘Update’.
If you wish to learn more about creating your own mappings we have created a guide which you can find in our release notes below.
Victoria SmartForms statewide rollout – Northern Health
Background: In 2016, the journey to e-Referrals began with the National Digital Health Strategy. Now, five years later, Victoria has successfully rolled out e-Referrals statewide. We caught up with some of the PHNs who have been behind the rollout to reflect on the journey that has brought them to this successful outcome.
Bonnie Ferguson
Project Lead | Northern Health
When and why did Northern Health introduce GP e-Referrals?
Northern Health implemented e-Referrals in 2017, initially as a pilot project. That was then integrated into standard process, however, GP uptake was slow. In 2020 Northern Health observed a significant increase in GP utilisation of e-Referrals in response to a dedicated project to “Axe the Fax”, initiated with the aim to reduce clinical risk due to fax error and lost paper referrals.
How has HealthLink’s SmartForms technology supported GP e-Referral?
Northern Health has implemented seven HealthLink SmartForms, which have assisted to improve the quality of referrals received with the inclusion of statewide referral criteria and information that needs to be included to support the referral.
Have there been any noticeable improvements to the patient referral transfer process from GPs to Northern Health since HealthLink was introduced?
Yes, there have been significant improvements to the referral transfer process since HealthLink e-Referrals were introduced, including:
- More timely registration of patients as transmission includes coded data of patient profile and GP profile, reducing manual data entry points.
- Greater referral security.
- Higher reliability of complete transmission of clinical content.
- Improved legibility as documents are received in digital format.
- Acknowledgement of successful transmission.
- HL7 messaging enabling tracking of referrals.
- Reduced time from referral to first appointment.
How have GPs across Melbourne and your referrer catchment adopted this solution?
GP adoption of e-Referrals has been the key strategy towards mitigation of risk due to fax error. Identification of GP clinics as the source of fax errors enabled rapid response and interventions that provided targeted support and education to GPs in how to access and use HealthLink e-Referrals.
What is the greatest benefit GPs have received by using the new e-Referrals?
A more streamlined, easy-to-use process for GP referrers as the electronic referral feature is integrated into GP clinical software used by over 80% of general practices in the NH catchment.
Increased transparency for referrer and Specialist Clinic as referrals can be tracked more easily with referral date stamps and locations within the workflow (i.e. reduced loss of referral at the Specialist Clinic end)
Are you making specific improvements to your GP e-Referrals? Why, what are your goals?
The future goals of Northern Health are to improve communication to GPs and the quality of referrals received. This could be achieved by;
- The further development of SmartForms for all specialities where statewide referral criteria is available.
- The development of SmartForms for referral by GPs to diagnostic clinics.
- Exploring the capability of return communication to GPs via HealthLink.
For those GP practices who do not have compatible clinical software that support HealthLink e-Referrals (approximately 20% of referring GPs), a future goal would be to provide education and support in the use of HealthLink’s web-based portal, which will allow referrers to complete a referral form securely online and attach necessary reports and results.
Based on your current experience, would you ever go back to life before GP e-Referrals?
No way, never!!
To start using GP e-Referrals, check out our HealthLink SmartForm user guides for:
- Best Practice
- Genie Solutions
- Medical Director 3.16 and Above
Victoria SmartForms statewide rollout – Eastern Melbourne PHN
Background: In 2016, the journey to e-Referrals began with the National Digital Health Strategy. Now, five years later, Victoria has successfully rolled out e-Referrals statewide. We caught up with some of the PHNs who have been behind the rollout to reflect on the journey that has brought them to this successful outcome.
Kirsty McDougall
Lead – Digital Health | Eastern Melbourne PHN
When and why did Eastern Melbourne PHN introduce GP e-Referrals?
Since 2017, Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network (EMPHN) collaborated with three major health services (Eastern Health, Austin Health, Northern Health) and in October 2020, Monash Health, to develop and roll out the integrated HealthPathways Melbourne/e-Referral solution across more than 350 general practices in the region. This solution allows GPs to send e-Referrals that are auto populated from their clinical information system, creating a more seamless experience for patients. Within the e-Referral template, GPs can access the relevant referral pathway on HealthPathways Melbourne for guidance on referral criteria, and any relevant tests that need to be included with the referral.
The team has been supporting general practices using Medical Director, Best Practice, Genie and Medtech Evolution to adopt HealthLink SmartForms in sending referrals to Health Services and in addition, MyAged Care and promoting the SR Specialists functionality too.
EMPHN has ambitious targets for the future to see the cessation of the fax machine and transition to 100% e-Referrals.
How has HealthLink’s SmartForms technology supported the GP referral?
Knowing the referral has reached the door of the Health Service is one of the ways technology is supporting GPs. With fax, the GP can’t be confident that it has been successfully received, or pages missing and/or poor quality which is difficult to read at the Health service end.
We didn’t incentivise the general practices to come on board with SmartForms. This was general practice wanting to change to a different way of sending referrals – reducing time to generate a referral at the GP end and having the SmartForm templates that contain referral information and all the data that is required to have a good e-Referral and pulled out of the clinical software.
Other feedback that we have received from general practices includes how easy it is to complete the forms and not having to print and fax the referral form. Additionally, the GP will receive immediate acknowledgement of receipt of the e-Referral and it is instantly saved in the patient medical record, something the old fax machine simply can’t do.
How have GPs across Melbourne and your referrer catchment adopted this solution?
Awareness, support and training has been the key. In 2017, we ran an awareness campaign through an ‘Expression of Interest’.
And 4 years later, e-Referral is one of our key priorities in the toolbox of digital programs we provide and support to our general practices.
HealthLink provides excellent customer support and assists general practices to troubleshoot issues including registration and onboarding.
What is the great benefit GPs have received by using the new SmartForm e-Referral?
Positive feedback from general practice has been around the speed, certainty and accuracy and there is no cost to the GP.
Our role has been to support the change management and manage expectations that adapting to new technology takes time. Additionally, we have to consider the variability of IT skills of GPs and willingness to upgrade to the conformant version of their clinical software, and then there are those GPs moving from paper patient files to electronic patient records.
The e-Referral templates developed align with the Statewide Referral Criteria for Specialist Clinics. Inclusion of the criteria, along with a direct link to HealthPathways Melbourne, will help ensure the hospitals receive appropriate referrals, with the required information included, to avoid delays with the referral.
Based on your current experience, would you ever go back to life before GP e-Referrals?
No, it has been exciting and rewarding to see the monthly increase of e-Referrals into Health Services and we look forward to the expansion of more Health Services receiving e-Referrals.
Whilst GP change management is taking time, there is a lot of work being done to make it a better experience for both GPs and Health Services.
The message is loud and clear: Stop using fax to send referrals and embrace e-Referrals.
To start using GP e-Referrals, check out our HealthLink SmartForm user guides for:
- Best Practice
- Genie Solutions
- Medical Director 3.16 and Above
System Release – New Medicine Service (NMS)
We have updated the system! As some of you may be aware, one of the outcomes for Year 3 of the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework is an expansion of the New Medicine Service (NMS).
To support our customers, RxWeb has been updated this week so that any newly prescribed medicines dispensed under one of the thirteen new categories and that are listed on the published NMS Drug Lists ( New Medicine Service (NMS) – Drug Lists | NHSBSA ), will be flagged to the user during the dispensing process, subject to you having NMS switched on in your system configuration.
NMS Expansion categories:
- Acute coronary syndrome (ACS);
- Atrial fibrillation (AF);
- Coronary heart disease;
- Epilepsy;
- Glaucoma;
- Gout;
- Heart failure;
- Hypercholesterolaemia ;
- Long term risks of venous thromboembolism/embolism;
- Osteoporosis;
- Parkinson’s Disease;
- Stroke / transient ischemic attack; and
- Urinary incontinence and retention.
Please note that the current NMS eligible conditions/medicines will also continue as before, but the antiplatelet/anticoagulant therapy group is now included in the above list by reference to the underlying condition/reason for prescribing.
Introducing Our New Community Page
We are delighted to share with you our new Community Page. We’ve built this page to be a hub of information for our customers. You can keep up to date with upcoming events and webinars, expand your skillset with our lunch and learn library, and have your say on where our system goes next with our community suggestion box.
RxWeb is constantly evolving and improving which means there’s always something new to learn. We hope this page helps you and your team take full advantage of your system.
Upcoming Events and Webinars
Keep up to date with upcoming events and webinars that RxWeb will be attending or hosting. We regularly host Lunch & Learn webinars for our customers. These sessions have been hugely popular as we run through important topics and share useful tips and tricks. If you are looking to register for a webinar or are just curious about what’s in the calendar you’ll find the relevant info on the community page.
We also exhibit at a number of trade shows throughout the year. We love catching up with our customers. We hope to see some of you at The Pharmacy Show in October!
Lunch & Learn
If you ever miss one of our before-mentioned Lunch & Learn webinars, fear not! We always record our sessions and upload them to our community page. You can scroll back through the whole series up until now covering topics like ordering within RxWeb, EPS reporting and SMS messages.
Suggestion Box
We’ve also included a suggestion box! Our customers are at the heart of everything we do at RxWeb. Every new feature and updated piece of functionality we add to the system has been heavily influenced by the conversations and feedback we receive from our loyal customers.
Our customers help drive innovation and improvements in RxWeb and our hope is that this suggestion box will give you another channel to voice your opinion and share your ideas.
RxWeb Refer a Friend
And finally, we have launched our very own Refer-a-Friend program for RxWeb! This new program will reward current customers with 6 months FREE when they refer a friend who signs up with RxWeb. And that’s not all, your friend will also receive 6 months free as part of the program.
Why are we introducing this program now? Well firstly, we want to reward you, our customers who have trusted RxWeb to be the foundation of your Pharmacy. We often run promotional campaigns for new pharmacies but a referral program like this will give us an opportunity to reward our loyal customers too.
And that’s it… for now. Let us know what you think of the page and let us know if you would like anything else included there. We would love to hear your thoughts!