Digital Health

The My Health Record (MHR) system is a national platform that provides a secure, online summary of an individual’s key health information including:

• shared health summaries
• discharge summaries
• prescription and dispense records
• immunisation records
• pathology and diagnostic imaging reports.

MHR does not hold all the information kept in a healthcare professional’s medical records, instead it is intended to complement existing records by highlighting key information. All Australians now have an MHR, unless they chose to opt out. Patients can register for an MHR or opt out at any time.

Australian’s will soon experience better and faster access to their key health information in My Health Record. Read our recent Practice Connect newsletter for more information and how to prepare for these changes.

To find out more about using MHR, visit the links below:

• Using My Health Record in General Practice – Digital Health Toolkit
• Clinician Assist WA – My Health Record (individual login required, to register visit Clinician Assist WA)
• Clinical considerations for General Practitioners using My Health Record
• My Health Record participation obligations – Australian Digital Health Agency

My Health Record Fact Sheets:

Best Practice Best Practice Accessing Immunisation Information   Best Practice Accessing Prescription and Dispense View Best Practice Accessing the Medicare Overview Best Practice Accessing the Medicines Information View Best Practice Uploading a Shared Health Summary Best Practice Uploading an Event Summary  Best Practice Viewing Clinical Documents in My Health Record Medical Director Medical Director Accessing Advance Care Planning Information Medical Director Accessing Immunisation Information Medical Director Accessing Prescription and Dispense View Medical Director Accessing the Medicare Overview Medical Director Removing and Superseding Uploaded Documents Medical Director Request for Diagnostic  Imaging report NOT to be sent to My Health Record  Medical Director Request for Pathology report to NOT be sent to My Health Record Medical Director Stop a Prescription Record being Uploaded to My Health Record Medical Director Uploading a Shared Health Summary Medical Director Uploading an Event Summary Medical Director Viewing Clinical Documents in My Health Record Medical Director Viewing the Pathology and Diagnostic Imaging (DI) Reports Overview

To assist your patients to set up a myGov account, and link this to their MHR, visit the links below:

• Creating a myGov Account
• Linking your My Health Record
• Getting started with the 1800Medicare app

• Health Professional Online Services (HPOS) provides a convenient and secure way for healthcare providers and their delegated administrative users, such as practice staff, to interact with digital health services.To access HPOS as an individual, you need to create a Provider Digital Access (PRODA) account and follow the steps to set up HPOS access. Provider Digital Access (PRODA) is an online identity verification and authentication system used to securely access online healthcare provider services.We recommend registering an individual PRODA account using your personal (non-work related) email address so if you change employers in the future, you will still be able to access your individual account.To find out more about setting up and using HPOS, visit the links below:
  • Access to digital health tools and online provider services: Healthcare Identifiers, PRODA and HPOS – Digital Health Toolkit​
  • How to register an organisation in PRODA
  • HPOS and PRODA fact sheet

The National Authentication Service for Health (NASH) allows healthcare providers and supporting organisations to securely access and exchange health information. NASH Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates can be used to:

• access the Healthcare Identifiers (HI) Service
• access My Health Records
• send and receive health information using secure messaging systems
• send electronic prescriptions and enable transfer of paper-based prescription information via barcodes.

NASH PKI certificates expire after two years. Eight weeks before your certificate expires, you will have the option to renew it through HPOS  using your PRODA  account.

Check your NASH certificate expiry date

The organisation’s Responsible Officer (RO) or someone with an Organisational Maintenance Officer (OMO) delegation in Health Professionals Online Services (HPOS) can check the certificate expiry by logging in to the organisation via their individual PRODA account, then selecting:

1. Go to service on the HPOS tile
2. My programs
3. Healthcare Identifiers and My Health Record
4. Healthcare Identifiers – Manage existing records
5. My organisation details
6. the Certificates tab.

Renew your NASH certificate

NASH certificates can be requested in HPOS by the RO or OMO. Follow the steps above to navigate to the Certificates tab, then select:

1. Request a NASH PKI site certificate
2. Enter a mobile number
3. Tick the check box to confirm you have read and understood the terms and conditions
4. Save changes and submit.

When your certificate is ready for downloading, your Personal Identification Code (PIC) will be sent in a text message. You need the code to activate the certificate.

To find out more about NASH and how it provides access to digital services, visit the links below:

• Access to digital health tools and online provider services: Healthcare Identifiers, PRODA and HPOS – Digital Health Toolkit​
• Managing your options and obligations for NASH

Provider Connect Australia™(PCA™) is a free Australian Digital Health Agency initiative that enables healthcare providers to update their business information in a single place.

WAPHA have partnered with Provider Connect Australia^TM (PCA ^TM) to help transform data accuracy and increase digital health interoperability across the Australian healthcare ecosystem.

Register for PCA™

PCA™ can help your health service with:

• Updating important business partners when there has been a change in your service practitioners
• Improving usability of secure messaging.
• Reducing the time required to fill out new forms and registering your details across different websites.
• Always having up-to-date information about your partners

Learn more

• See our Provider Connect Australia™ registration guide
• Watch this short video for a quick overview of how PCA™ works
• Visit Provider Connect Australia (Australian Digital Health Agency)

Healthcare Providers can also get support to register for PCA™ by calling the Agency’s Digital Adoption Support team on (02) 6223 0741 option 3.

Secure messaging is the seamless and secure exchange of confidential clinical information between healthcare providers.

To send and receive secure messages, practices need to have a conformant clinical information system and register with one or more secure messaging providers.

WA Health Central Referral Service (CRS)

The WA Health Central Referral Service (CRS) prefers practices to send referrals by secure messaging, rather than sending them by fax or post.

Practices can send referrals to the CRS via HealthLink Secure Messaging: crefserv. If your practice already uses HealthLink, you can upload the CRS referral templates into your practice software and link it to HealthLink using the EDI address: crefserv.

To find out more, view the CRS guide for referrers, contact HealthLink online support or call the HealthLink Help Desk on 1800 125 036.

Secure Messaging Fact Sheets

Secure Messaging Getting Started – Guide and Checklist Secure Messaging FAQs

For further information, visit the links below:

• ​Using Secure Messaging in General Practice – Digital Health Toolkit​
• Clinician Assist WA – Central Referral Service (individual login required, to register visit Clinician Assist WA)

Electronic requests (eRequests or eOrders) are generated by the practice clinical software and sent electronically by the GP to a diagnostic testing services provider in the form of a secure message.

Previously, only some testing services or the results of testing requested by eRequests were uploaded to My Health Record. The Better and Faster Access initiative will ensure that all pathology and diagnostic imaging results will be automatically uploaded to My Health Record. Read our recent Practice Connect newsletter for more information and how to prepare for these changes.

Practices should contact their preferred diagnostic testing service provider to check if they offer eRequests with compatible software systems.

To find out more about eRequests, visit the link below:

• Using Electronic Requesting in General Practice – Digital Health Toolkit
• Participating labs and required practice software

With electronic prescribing (ePrescribing), prescription information is safely and securely created, transferred and dispensed electronically. Patients can choose to receive either an electronic prescription (eScript), via email or text message, or a paper prescription from their prescriber.

An Active Script List is a consolidated list of the patient’s active electronic prescriptions including repeats. Once a patient has registered for an Active Script List (also known as MySL) at a pharmacy, they can authorise any pharmacy to access and dispense their electronic prescriptions from their Active Script List without presenting the tokens (QR codes).

ePrescribing Fact Sheets

Electronic Prescribing Frequently Asked Questions

ePrescribing in Best Practice Modifying eScripts

ePrescribing in Best Practice How to prescribe

ePrescribing Videos

Best Practice – How to Cancel or Resend an ePrescription

Best Practice – How to Send an ePrescription

Best Practice – How to turn on ePrescribe

Medical Director –  How to turn on ePrescribe

To find out more about ePrescribing, visit the links below:

• Using Electronic Prescriptions in General Practice – Digital Health Toolkit
• Clinician Assist WA – Electronic Prescribing (individual login required, to register visit Clinician Assist WA)

Telehealth involves using video or telephone (audio-only) to provide health services instead of face-to- face consultations.

When practitioners provide telehealth consultations, the privacy requirements relating to confidentiality, consent and the security of health information are the same as for face-to-face consultations.

Healthdirect Video Call

The healthdirect Video Call platform is purpose-built for providing telehealth consultations.

To find out if your organisation is eligible to use Video Call, call 1800 580 771 or email videocall@healthdirect.org.au

Telehealth in Residential Aged Care Homes

WA Primary Health Alliance (WAPHA) commissioned Visionflex, a clinical virtual care technology company, to provide 180 residential aged care homes in WA with a telehealth cart and accompanying virtual care accessories.

To view a list of residential aged care homes with this telehealth technology click here.

Telehealth Fact Sheets

Telehealth Frequently Asked Questions​

To find out more about using telehealth, visit the links below:

• Using Telehealth in General Practice – Digital Health Toolkit
• Clinician Assist WA – telehealth (individual login required, to register visit Clinician Assist WA)
• MBS telehealth services – including GPs & OMPs
• Example quality improvement activity: telehealth video consultation trial

The Practice Incentives Program eHealth Incentive (ePIP) encourages practices to stay up to date with digital health and adopt new technology. To receive the ePIP payments, practices must comply with the following eligibility criteria:

1. Integrating Healthcare Identifiers into electronic practice records.
2. Secure messaging capability.
3. Data records and clinical coding.
4. Electronic transfer of prescriptions.
5. My Health Record system.

You can apply for the ePIP Incentive online through HPOS using your PRODA account.

To find out more about the ePIP, visit the links below:

• PIP eHealth Incentive fact sheet
• Practice Assist PIP webpage

Practices holding Data Sharing Agreements with WA Primary Health Alliance will benefit from the new data storage and analytics platform, Primary Health Insights.

Developed by PHNs as a national initiative, the vision for Primary Health Insights is to use advanced analytics tools to produce greater insights from de-identified general practice data. General practices and PHNs will be more informed when making decisions about Australian primary healthcare delivery and improving patient health outcomes.

De-identified patient data routinely extracted from general practice clinical information systems (CISs) is now being stored on Primary Heath Insights, which has been built to best practice standards of data security and is subject to rigorous, ongoing cyber security validation as well as the robust National Data Governance Framework developed by the PHNs.

Data stored on the platform is determined by the existing Data Sharing Agreement in place between practices and WA Primary Health Alliance and could include data extracted for general practice PIP QI purposes.

De-identified patient data held on Primary Health Insights cannot be combined with other data sets to identify individuals. The obligations and responsibilities of general practices to obtain and manage patient consent for sharing de-identified health data remain unchanged.

WA Primary Health Alliance is the developer and operator of Primary Health Insights on behalf of the 27 participating PHNs. The Australian Medical Association, Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Rural Doctors Association of Australia, Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine, Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia, Consumers Health Forum of Australia and Health Consumers’ Council of WA have been briefed about this initiative and all expressed their support.

For further information, visit primaryhealthinsights.org.au

The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) offers online training, webinars and podcasts about a range of digital health initiatives, including My Health Record, electronic prescribing, cyber security and more.

To access the ADHA resources, visit the links below:

• ADHA – Online training
• ADHA – Upcoming events and webinars
• ADHA – Archived webinars
• ADHA – Podcasts

Digital tools aged care journey – case study

An older person experiences a deterioration in their health whilst at home in the community and requires hospitalisation. After discharge, the patient is advised to follow up with their GP, which starts the following journey.

View the Digital tools aged care journey.