to identify those who might benefit from a PCEHR. Team members then attend the ward to speak to the patient. The approach is also underway at St Vincent’s Private, she said. St Vincent’s is also using printed information about the eHealth records system on the patients’ meal trays. “We have a meal tray card, which is a small business card folded over that sits on the tray, and that has a pager number for our team,” Ms Byrne said. “The patient asks the nurse to page the recruitment team and the team will go up to the patient’s bedside and register the patient.” Adrian Verryt, internal change and adoption manager at St Vincent’s, said the team ensures that staff members are informed about assisted registration and how this can be incorporated in their work. “We want administrative and clinical staff to have the confidence to have a conversation about what PCEHR is, so we have a one-page fact sheet which broadly outlines what we are doing, why we are doing it and what the benefits are to signing up,” he said. “That is information both to the patient and information to the staff member, so that at any point in time, whether we are handing it out to the patient on the ward or a staff member, we
are getting the same key messages across to them.” Ms Byrne said the Accenture ART is simply a downloadable executable which sets up an application on the desktop. “Once you put in your HPI-O and your credential information, it sets up a connection to the PCEHR, and that is just to create the record,” she said. “That’s really all it is doing – you don’t see any data, you are just creating the record.
“It is all integrated with the administration systems they use every day and does not require double entry of patient information whereas the outpatients areas might want to use the ART.” “The tool is essentially a one-page form and then the desktop application. The patients fill in the form and they sign it; it is very simple and quick to fill in. That information is entered into the tool and the record is created instantly.” Emerging Systems has also designed an integrated tool within its software – which
has been PCEHR-compliant since last year – and which enables staff to create a PCEHR for the patient from within the clinical system. DoHA plans that GP software will also have an integrated tool in the coming months, which Emerging Systems’ CEO, Russel Duncan, and his team have pioneered. “Emerging Systems will be the first vendor to do it – consumer assisted registration within the clinical system,” Ms Byrne said. “Part of [Mr Verryt’s] work now is looking at which areas of the hospital want to use that functionality and which ones want to use the assisted registration tool.” “It makes sense in areas like bookings, admissions and preadmission clinic that they use Emerging Systems’ solution,” Mr Verryt said. “It is all integrated with the administration systems they use every day and does not require double entry of patient information whereas the outpatients areas might want to use the ART.” Ms Byrne said numbers of patients with a PCEHR had been increasing week to week since the trial began in December of last year. “Now that we are seeing more patients coming in with eHealth records, we are looking forward to the GPs connecting.”