Best Practice Software

Saffron SP3 & Medicare Web Services Have Arrived!

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In recent times, Medicare Web Services and the requirement for your practice to transition to this new technology within your software has certainly been a very popular topic of discussion.  Team Bp are very excited to have recently released our newest version of Bp Premier, Saffron SP3 containing some exciting new features, and most importantly, bringing all of the functionality required for your practice to be fully compliant with, and connected to Medicare Web Services technology to continue your connection to functions like Medicare Claiming, and the Australian Immunisation Register in Bp Premier.

It is critical that you are aware that your practice has until Sunday June 19th 2022 to install your upgrade to Saffron SP3, and complete your connection to Medicare Web Services via PRODA. This date is sure to approach rapidly, so if your practice has not yet installed Saffron SP3 it is vital that you plan now for your practice to do so as soon as possible.  If you’re not sure where to start, the best place to begin is our Enablement Material for Medicare Web Services page – here you can follow all the steps to get your PRODA account in order to be fully prepared for your upgrade.

What functions in Bp Premier rely on Medicare Web Services? These are:

  • Medicare Bulk Bill Claiming, and private Patient Claiming functionality
  • Patient eligibility verifications for Medicare and DVA
  • The Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) for transmitting patient vaccination data.

If your practice has not completed your upgrade to Saffron SP3 before June 19th, you will be impacted significantly, and be unable to access any of the functions listed in Bp Premier – this means not being able to verify patient eligibility, not being able to transmit AIR notifications, and also no ability to for Medicare to receive payment claims from your practice.

Medicare Web Services is certainly an essential reason for you to complete your upgrade, but Saffron SP3 also contains some very exciting new features alongside this critical change. In Saffron SP3, there is brand new AIR functionality built directly into the patient record, new cancer screening preventative health warnings, new Medicare claiming functionality, and more! You can find all of the information available on our Knowledge Base (click ‘Help’ then ‘Online’ in Bp Premier to access), or watch our free Masterclass webinar that was recently held here.

In summary, what are the key points that you need to be aware of in relation to Medicare Web Services?

  • You must upgrade to Bp Premier Saffron SP3 by Sunday June 19th 2022
  • If you haven’t upgrade by June 19th, you’ll be unable to access any Medicare and AIR functions in Bp Premier
  • Saffron SP3 also contains exciting new features, like AIR access directly within the patient record
  • Access our Knowledge Base for step-by-step instructions on all things Medicare Web Services, and to see the full list of new features.
    • If you haven’t visited the Knowledge Base before, click ‘Help’, then ‘Online’ from within Bp Premier to head directly there.

As always, help is available! If you need assistance with anything related to Saffron SP3, Medicare Web Services, or any other enquiries, our Support team are available via phone or email, so please get in touch!

Authored by:

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Bec Bland
Training & Deployment Leader at Best Practice Software

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Changes to Image Based Prescribing

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From 1st April, 2022, prescribers may continue to fax or email digital images of paper prescriptions to the pharmacy of the patient’s choice. However, the prescriber must now send the original paper prescription to the pharmacy. The original temporary exemption that was in place from March 2020 did not require a paper copy of the prescription to be sent to the pharmacy (unless an S8 or S4 medication), we can now confirm that this is ending on March 31, 2022.

For practices using our Bp Premier product, ePrescribing is available and will ensure that an electronic version of the prescription can be provided to the patient, without the need to supply a paper copy of the prescription to the patient or pharmacy. Further information regarding ePrescribing for Bp Premier can be accessed here.

For practices using our Bp VIP.net product, we are expecting that ePrescribing will become available before the end of 2022. Until then, prescriptions that are faxed or emailed to a pharmacy will require a paper copy or the original prescription to be sent.

Authored by:

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Jessica White
Head of Commercial and Government at Best Practice Software

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NASH Certificates – It’s Time to Renew!

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National Authentication Service for Health (NASH) Certificates are issued by Services Australia to your Practice to securely access and share information using digital health systems.  NASH Certificates for many practices in Australia will expire on or before 13th March 2022 as Services Australia upgrade the certificate security.

What Purpose do NASH Certificates Serve?

In your Best Practice Software product, your NASH Certificate is used to support the following functions:

  • My Health Record
  • Electronic Prescribing with eRx
  • Healthcare Identifiers (HI) service for both eligibility and validation checks

These certificates expire every two years, and a current NASH certificate is required to continue to use the functions listed above. Previously, the HI Service, and eRx both used your Practice’s Medicare Site Certificate for these secure communications instead, however both services now require the use of your NASH certificate.

Updating Your NASH Certificate

If your certificate is due to expire on or before 13th March 2022, you can renew this now, there is no need to wait until the expiry date.  You can request and download a renewed NASH Certificate for your Practice through Healthcare Professions Online Services (HPOS), and install this into your software. Doing so ensures that My Health Record, prescribing with eRx, and HI lookups will continue to function in your Practice without interruption.

To request an updated NASH Certificate, your practice’s nominated Organisation Maintenance Officer needs to log onto the HPOS portal through your practice’s PRODA account and request an updated certificate.  The Australian Digital Health Agency have provided several resources to assist with requesting your new Certificate, including:

Once you have renewed your NASH Certificate, you can then install this into your software to continue your access to My Health Record, prescribing with eRx, and the HI service. 

Need Extra Assistance?

Not sure what to do in your software? Help is available on our Knowledge Base! Simply log in to your software, open the ‘Help’ menu, and click ‘Online’ to be taken to the relevant Knowledge Base to find step-by-step instructions to guide you through this process. As always, the Bp Support team are here to help as well, and you can contact us on 1300 401 111 for assistance.

Authored by:

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Bec Bland
Training & Deployment Leader at Best Practice Software

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Moving to Medicare Web Services – Is Your Practice Prepared?

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Please note that this article is for our Australian customers.

As you are aware, Services Australia is upgrading the current technology used by practice management software, to connect to critical digital health services such as Medicare/DVA Claiming, Eclipse and the Australian Immunisation Register. This new technology is referred to as Medicare Web Services (MWS).

A number of our products currently connect to Services Australia via a Medicare Client Adaptor, which utilises a Medicare PKI certificate also known as a site certificate. As per the new requirements, practice management software vendors will be replacing this Medicare PKI certificate method with a Provider Digital Access (PRODA) account, which will lead to the replacement of the current Medicare Client Adaptor technology.

What does this mean for your Practice?

For Bp Premier Customers:

  • We expect Saffron SP3 to be available towards the end of February 2022. This is the version of Bp Premier that contains all MWS changes needed to meet transition dates. We recommend that your Practice upgrades as soon as this is made available.

  • Prior to upgrading to Saffron SP3, you must ensure that your have registered and configured your PRODA account. If this is not completed prior to the upgrade being applied, your Practice will not be able to access any Services Australia business functions.

  • Bp Premier customers have also been granted a 3-month extension by Services Australia and now have until 19 June 2022 to upgrade to Saffron SP3. To take advantage of this extension, your Practice must ensure that they have received a new PKI Certificate and that this is installed and configured for existing Medicare functionality to continue to function after the original cut off date of 13 March 2022.

For Bp VIP.net Customers:

  • We expect the next version of Bp VIP.net to be made available in April 2022. This is the version of Bp VIP.net that contains MWS changes needed to meet transition dates. We recommend that your Practice upgrades as soon as this is made available.

  • Due to some of the complexities involved in implementing these important changes, we will not meet the original March 13 2022 deadline and have successfully obtained an extension to this date on behalf of all of our Bp VIP.net customers. As a Bp VIP.net customer, this means that your Practice will now have an additional 3 months to transition to our final Medicare Web Services enabled build. The new date for your transition deadline is now Sunday the 19th of June, 2022.

  • To take advantage of this extension, your Practice must ensure that they have received a new PKI Certificate and that this is installed and configured for existing Medicare functionality to continue to function after the original cut-off date of 13 March 2022.

  • Prior to upgrading to the Bp VIP.net release containing MWS functionality, you must ensure that you have registered and configured your PRODA account. If this is not completed prior to the upgrade being applied, your Practice will not be able to access any Services Australia business functions.

For Bp Allied Customers:

  • The next version of Bp Allied, V7 SP2, is due for release towards the end of February 2022.

  • This release will contain the changes needed to support the new MWS requirements.

  • As we leverage a third-party API to connect to Services Australia functionality, all Practices must apply the V7 SP2 update prior to the 12th of March 2022 to ensure that they can continue to access Services Australia business functions.

Moving to Medicare Web Services - what support is available?

  • Access your Bp Knowledgebase to review the steps required to register and configure your PRODA account, along with accessing other supporting information about Medicare Web Services such as renewing and configuring your PKI Certificate.

  • Review the Enablement Material our fantastic Training Team has put together to support our Practices through this change.

  • For Bp Premier users, register for our upcoming Saffron SP3 Masterclass Series here. Classes begin from the 23rd of February 2022!

  • For Bp VIP.net customers, keep an eye out for our planned April Masterclass Series.

  • Send our team an email if you have any questions or require any further information!

Authored by:

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Jessica White
Head of Commercial and Government at Best Practice Software

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The New Generation of Practice Management Systems – From Interoperability to AI

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Early practice management systems (PMS) were born out of the need to provide better continuity of care for patients and more efficient operations for a GP/practice, both of which contribute to the improved quality and safety of care delivery. They have created significant and perhaps intangible benefits to individuals and society over the last several decades.

The new technology enablers, however, make it possible to transform PMS into more federated, better connected, and evidence-based systems by leveraging the emerging interoperability standards and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.  This will make the new generation of PMS even more central to primary care systems within the overall healthcare care continuum.

This will enable future generations of Best Practice Software to bring many new benefits to patients, practitioners, and the community at large – contributing to a ‘more sophisticated and connected community healthcare management’, as mentioned in a recent Wild Health article.

Technology Enablers

The technology enablers include web-based and cloud infrastructure, now being used as the basis for the next generation of Best Practice Software, referred to internally as Titanium.

When used in conjunction with new interoperability standards such as HL7 FHIR®, cloud technology adds new mechanisms to the way various parties in the delivery of healthcare are connected, including support for patient engagement.

Through the cloud, AI solutions can be built leveraging huge amounts of data created by clinicians, including as part of collaboration with other clinicians, and in some cases, generated by medical devices. Such solutions can provide new insights to the clinicians and support new models of clinician-patient collaborations, with added emphasis on preventative and personalized health.

The Added Value of Interoperability

Architecting for interoperability adds dynamic and evolvable aspects to the way health systems of the future are connected, typically using APIs over cloud. This allows constructing and managing flexible event-driven clinical workflows supporting multiple participants, including hospitals, Aged Care facilities, community health centres, and patients.  This is not currently possible using HL7 v2 messaging integration approaches.

The emerging HL7 FHIR® standard provides a common information model for representing digital health data (the so called FHIR Resource entities) and API interfaces, both of which support building interoperable and connected digital health systems, and many international vendors are now embracing it.  In some cases, this is in response to regulatory requirements, such as the US Office of National Coordinator (ONC) cure act Final Rule.  This rule was designed to give patients and their healthcare providers secure access to health information. It also aims to increase innovation and competition by fostering an ecosystem of applications to provide patients with more choices in their healthcare, in part through the standardized API interfaces.

Best Practice Software recognizes the many benefits that the FHIR® standard can bring in the context of cloud technologies and is currently establishing a long term FHIR® adoption roadmap as part of its strategic direction.

The Added Value of AI

In general, AI is a collection of interrelated technologies used to solve problems autonomously and perform tasks to achieve defined objectives without explicit guidance from a human being. AI adds value through automating many tasks typically involving human actions and decision making.

Examples of AI use in healthcare are in the interpretation of medical images, e.g., X-rays and MRI scans, in the personalized treatment of patients based on their medical history and genetics, and in the optimization of clinical workflows.

A key component of AI is machine learning (ML), whereby computers ‘learn’ without being explicitly programmed, making use of the large amount of clinical data collected over time (aka training data) and applying advanced computational reasoning techniques. This can be in the form of:

  1. statistical machine learning searching for a predictive function from the training data
  2. reinforcement learning approaches constructing AI algorithms with “rewards” or “penalties” based on their problem-solving performance, inspired by control theory approaches
  3. deep learning solutions based on the use of artificial neural networks.

Other AI applications are in natural language processing, computer vision, used in many clinical image processing applications, and robotics. Another area of use in health is knowledge representation, particularly used to document clinical knowledge in a computable form such as SNOMED-CT clinical terminology.

Many rule-based Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems can also be regarded as a form of AI.  Best Practice Software has included since its initial release CDSs aimed at helping clinicians to provide safer and more personalized healthcare. For example, when prescribing, background checks are made for potential allergies, drug interactions, contra-indications etc.  The use of new AI approaches can add another level to CDS, leveraging data-based solutions, contributing to better evidence-based healthcare provision.

Best Practice Software is currently looking at AI technologies for its future products to advance the creation of learning health systems for primary health providers as part of connected health ecosystems. The aim is to support more effective, evidence-based, and personalized clinical care and adaptable clinical workflows, as well as more efficient administrative operations of practices, based on the large volumes of historic data that has been collected. Possibilities include analysis of previous investigations of patients to support predictive clinical actions, text mining of correspondence with specialists, hospitals, and other clinicians, to help better decision making in case of similar future symptoms and so on.

While interoperability delivers more connected and event-driven care, analytics and AI provide augmented decision making for clinicians.

Establishing Trust for Providers and Consumers - Guidance for Developers

An important consideration when discussing AI technologies is to ensure that clinicians trust the decisions that are made as a result of the use of the AI system. This is often referred to as an explainability problem, which requires mechanisms to support clinicians in understanding how AI systems make decisions.

There is a further element of trust, whereby that learning health systems need to ensure that personal and societal confidence in IT systems is preserved in the presence of the data proliferation and sharing. To this end special care needs to be taken to express rules related to privacy, policy and ethics.  These concerns were discussed at more length in the paper delivered by Best Practice Software at the recent AI in Healthcare workshop in Oct 2021, and highlighted next.

One way to create trust is to develop “explainable” AI, where developers can present the underlying basis for decision-making in a way that is understandable to humans and can demonstrate that the system is working as expected by clinicians.

Another part of the guidance for developers is related to the problem of expressing computable expressions of policies, such as obligations, permissions, accountability, responsibility, and delegation. These expressions can be implemented in code as part of any digital health application, including the AI solutions. For example, they can be used to encode rules associated with privacy consent, governing the rules of access to personal healthcare information, or with research consent, governing the rules of clinical research. 

Computable expressions of policies are also important when one needs to express responsibilities associated with passing of healthcare data between providers, taking into account various legal constraints such as data ownership or custodianship or regulatory constraints associated with privacy.

AI brings its own set of policy issues such as how one can go about specifying ‘responsibility’ of AI applications, e.g. in the case of safety concerns, is this a responsibility of the AI developer, the IT staff involved in deploying the system or of the users of the system such as the clinicians.

These are issues which are currently yet to be addressed as part of legal systems, but the computable policy framework should be a required prerequisite when building scalable AI in any healthcare organization.

Co-authored by:

New Generation of Practice Management Systems Author Headshots

Dr Frank Pyefinch
CEO at Best Practice Software
&
Dr Zoran Milosevic
Interoperability and AI Consultant at Best Practice Software

Footnote

The paper presented at the AI in Healthcare Workshop is available upon request. If you would like to obtain a copy, please contact Dr Zoran Milosevic here.

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Vaccine Hesitancy – Navigating the Three Cs

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This article was contributed by guest author Tracey Johnson.

Vaccine hesitancy, along with its potential scale and impact, has become a topic of national debate since the middle of 2021.  Fortunately, we saw a rapid take-up of vaccination across the country in the final quarter of last year.  Together with every practice, we are now facing the challenge of those patients whose reluctance to embrace the COVID vaccine jeopardises community safety, health system capacity and our own team’s wellbeing.

What We Know About Vaccine Hesitancy

Vaccine hesitancy is complex.  It varies across time, place and vaccine type.  Many patients who are choosing to delay their COVID vaccination are already vaccinated for many other conditions and illnesses, and often do not consider themselves “anti-vaxxers”.  It is this group who are more likely to be influenced to adopt the jab.  Those whose stance on vaccination is long entrenched and underpinned by deep suspicions of science and institutions will continue to read extremely biased social media content and turn out to protests which only serve to reinforce their views.

So, what do we know about the more malleable and open vaccine hesitant patient?  The ‘Three Cs’ determine to what extent our public health efforts might be successful.

vaccine hesitancy venn diagram

Complacency

With Australia’s closed borders and public health measures such as mask wearing, social distancing and lockdowns, much of the population had not experienced the realities of widespread COVID transmission within the community.  Many believed that lockdowns and economic turmoil were in fact worse than COVID itself.  This is complacency in action.  Images of exhausted healthcare workers in the US, over-run hospitals in India and a mounting death toll from waves of COVID in the UK started to shift the perception by the middle of 2021.  No longer was it easy to dismiss COVID as a disease with limited and acute potential in older populations, and deaths in nursing homes.

A state like Queensland, which has only recently experienced major uncontrolled outbreaks, remained home to many complacent communities.  Late in 2021, when a COVID positive case holidaying in Townsville led to no community transmission, many held a bolstered optimism that COVID was a “city thing”. The variation in vaccination rates between metropolitan locations, and regional and rural areas which have never reported cases is stark. 

Then – COVID arrives in towns like Goondiwindi, or indigenous communities like Wilcannia.  Suddenly, there are frantic calls for vaccination.  Complacency can be overturned when figures near to the community, or with whom the community identify, speak to the ever-present danger of COVID.  Localised campaigns by community leaders in various ethnic communities have shown that complacency can be overcome if knowledge is shared by trusted figures and imminence is emphasised.  We have been working closely with our PHN to share video case studies and engage community leaders.  We even ran a shared medical appointment model involving an interpreter and community leader to kick off our vaccination drive in the Somali community in our South-East QLD suburb of Inala.

Confidence

Confidence should be easy to build in a vaccine launch environment unlike any we have ever seen.

Having worked in drug discovery, I have personally attested to groups of our patients how “drug development as usual” occurs.  Months waiting for grant applications to be reviewed, months more waiting for ethics applications to be approved, study launch hoping to attract a few willing volunteers meeting strict criteria, data analysis and reporting leading to the next grant.  The cycle repeats year after year.  Even when data is great, years are lost waiting for government food and drug agencies to consider new drug registration and reimbursement applications.  The time lost to waiting for money and approvals can easily account for half of the time.  

When it came to developing a vaccine for COVID – money was poured at the problem.  Scientists worked around the clock with growing teams.  They built on drug platforms discovered years before and applied them to COVID.  Governments prioritised consideration of drug registration applications and pre-purchased drugs even before they were fully validated.  With over 3 billion people now vaccinated, speedy adverse event reporting and timely data on deaths from vaccination versus outcomes for the unvaccinated, data is our friend in building confidence in the science. 

vaccine hesitancy quote Tracey Johnson

We keep our COVID resources in a shared clinical drive so that the latest information is at the fingertips of our entire team.  Active discussion on our “teams” channel rapidly disseminates great statistics to combat vaccine hesitancy.  The University of Queensland produced a tool highlighting your chances of getting struck by asteroids, cracking a double yoke egg and all sorts of other meaningful comparisons to highlight the advantages of vaccination.  Such tools are great to use with patients, as they offer a somewhat light-hearted take on the very real statistics that they’re often concerned about.

Convenience

Convenience is the final pillar.  Queensland Health has done, and continues to do a great job in getting access to jabs in schools, Bunnings carparks, on weekends and promoting vaccines available in pharmacies.  Since September of 2021, there has always been a vaccine option available.  Sadly, many in our community do not tap into traditional media, so boosting knowledge around these vaccination options requires our teams’ letting patients know what they can do.  We have used social media, our team encouraging patients to walk into nearby pharmacies and promoting the free sausages available at Bunnings.  This has ensured that our already full vaccine clinics did not create a waiting list amongst patients in our own community.  Given the unattractive remuneration we receive from vaccination, our team did not hesitate to encourage patients to take up other options if it meant getting vaccination earlier.  Where we had spare vaccine doses available on the day, we administered them to vaccine hesitant patients whilst they were still committed.

Our own vaccine clinics ran from 7am until 9am for many months and still operate on Saturday mornings to ensure working and school age patients have access.  With access now so easy, we have scaled back our vaccine delivery to sessions during weekdays so that our nurses are more available to complete chronic disease and preventative health work.

With the QLD borders now open, we look closely at our patient records to assess who still needs a prompt to get vaccinated.  Our region has one of the lowest rates of vaccination in all South-East Queensland, despite our practice being one of Brisbane’s early movers to launch vaccination.  With data extraction tools like Cubiko, we have been able to identify patients whose charts indicate an absence of vaccination.  We continue to use these reports to track vaccination status in our patient population.  In the past we benefitted from Cubiko being able to tell us which patients were eligible for AstraZeneca when vaccination was staged or were no longer eligible when age restrictions were brought in.  This saved our already overwhelmed reception team many hours of searching through lists.

These lists over-sample patients as until recently there was limited capacity to draw down data from the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).  One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that Medicare Web Services is now working actively with software providers like Best Practice to link AIR History directly to a patient record.  What a boon that will be for vaccination planning, automatic recalls, and practice reminder systems!  Expect this improvement from midway through 2022.

Remain Positive - Remain Committed

Remaining positive throughout the pandemic has been the hardest thing for all healthcare providers.  However, positivity has been shown to have greater impact than just on team morale.  The media has been replete with stories around the often vocal 10% of the population that are staunchly remaining unvaccinated.  Research has shown the community responds far more favourably if the approximately 90% who are vaccinated is celebrated.  Acknowledging how common vaccination is amongst your patients can help push conservative patients over the line.  They will want to join the herd!

Working as a team is important for all healthcare provision.  This is especially important when it comes to requests for exemption from vaccination.  Our doctors and nurses agreed months ago to strictly follow the exemption process to the letter.  With shared commitment it was impossible for patients to short-circuit vaccination by appealing to the compassion of their healthcare team.  Everyone had the one message; vaccinate now.

Language Is Your Ally

In the early days our team were so polite when speaking to patients exhibiting vaccine hesitancy, even charming in the way they explained the risks of the disease and benefits of vaccination.  It did not take long for their language to harden.  We often hear accounts now of doctors telling their elderly, multi-morbid patients with many risk factors that what they know is that it is almost certain they will die if they get COVID.  

Vaccine hesitancy tracey johnson quote 2

Finally, we remain grateful for the stance taken by government that even private healthcare providers need to have all staff vaccinated.  Like many practices, some of our less educated team members were concerned about vaccination.  Highlighting to them that they will be at the front line when COVID becomes endemic ensured most were willing to get vaccinated.  We had one very reluctant team member.  The government edict around healthcare workers finally saw them book Moderna at a pharmacy just in the nick of time to meet the deadline.  Loss of rights to earn, go to restaurants and clubs did the trick!  We have seen a similar cascade amongst our younger patients and those working in sectors with vaccination mandates.

Looking Ahead

In the future, will vaccination rates remain high? 

That really depends upon government edicts and how successfully we continue to address the ‘Three Cs’. We have much we can control at a practice level to support maintenance of vaccination status.  How long key public health messages continue to emphasise the importance of vaccination will be central to our success.  The emerging science on how regularly we need boosters will be important as annual vaccinations might be resisted due to inconvenience.  If the edicts and campaigns melt away, we will probably see vaccination rates via boosters fall to levels similar to those for flu, insufficient to create herd immunity.  That means our practice systems and commitment to public health will need to fill the gap by prompting patients to get vaccinated.

Authored by:

Tracey Johnson Blog Author Image

Tracey Johnson
CEO at Inala Primary Care

Tracey Johnson is CEO of Inala Primary Care, a large general practice serving one of Queensland’s poorest suburb, located in Brisbane’s west.  

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Displaying Patient Vaccination Status in Bp VIP.net

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With cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 surging in Australia, and recently reaching the shores of New Zealand, the desire to quickly and easily view a patient’s vaccination status when booking an appointment, or providing specialist care for a patient has never been more front of mind.  Vaccination rates across both sides of the Tasman Sea have been steadily on the rise, with over 93%, of the adult population double-vaccinated in both countries. 

Bp VIP.net is highly customisable to your practice’s individual needs, and the ability to easily record an individual patient’s vaccination status is just one of the many possibilities in your software.   One of the best places to record this information is within your UDFs, where you can create additional fields to capture quickly and easily all of the desired, and up-to-date information that you require for your patients.  COVID vaccination status is one possibility, or you may even wish to add some other additional fields such as Gender Identity, or Preferred Pronouns.  Fields like these can be added with selection lists using the Pick List function in the Form Designer, but the possibilities for customising your UDFs are endless.

One other possibility is the option to record your patients’ COVID vaccination status directly within the Patient Details UDF screen, usually accessed by hitting the F3 key (pictured below).

By capturing the COVID vaccination status of your patients within the Patient Details screen, this enables you to use this information in other areas of Bp VIP.net, such as an Autotext creation in the Appointment Book showing the vaccination status and date of vaccination.

Patient vaccination status screen in Bp VIP.net

There are some points to be aware of when customising your UDFs in Bp VIP.net. When adding a new field to your Patient Details UDF, be sure to select the Field Type of ‘Patient’. This ensures that the value entered into the field will stay in until it is manually changed. Do not add fields to your Patient Details UDF that have the field type of ‘Medical’ as these fields are designed to only capture information on one visit date, and often cause saving issues if the field is replicated on the Medical Desktop and updated by multiple users from various areas of the software.

For detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to add fields for COVID vaccination status to your Patient Details UDF, or any other additional information, be sure to access our newly published article on our Knowledge Base.

With Bp VIP.net UDFs, the possibilities for you and your practice team to customize how your software works for you are endless.  Today, we’ve been looking through the lens of COVID vaccination statues, but the same steps can be applied to recording any other information of your choosing.  If you’re interested in finding out more, be sure to access our Knowledge Base for detailed instructions, simply open the Help menu from within Bp VIP.net and click Online to be taken directly there. Our team of Training Specialists are also here to support you with timesaving tips and tricks just like this one.

You can find out more, or get in touch with us at our website.

Authored by:

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Johanna Monson
Training & Deployment Specialist at Best Practice Software

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Save Time In Your Day with Default MBS Items

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Depending on the type of practice you’re working in, you might find that you’re often billing the same MBS item over and over again.

If this is the case, you will likely benefit from setting up default MBS items for your practitioners. Setting up default MBS items can save precious time when searching for the correct MBS item to bill at the end of a consult.

For example, perhaps you are regularly performing telephone consultations, and are finding yourself having to manually add the correct item number at the end of each and every consult.

Default MBS items are easy to set up and can be customised for each practitioner. Simply navigate to Setup > Users, select the practitioner who you wish to add a default MBS item for and click Edit.

Add the MBS item you wish to use by default to the Default Item no: field on the right-hand side of the screen and click Save.

Next, you will need to enable the default MBS item number. Select Setup > Preferences, and make sure the practitioner whose default MBS item number you wish to enable is selected from the User name: field at the top of the screen.

Tick Use the default MBS item in the Finalise window and click Save and close.

The next time the provider finalises a visit in the patient record, the default MBS item will appear under Items to bill. If the provider needs to select a different MBS item number for a consult, they can easily overwrite the default item number with a new one.

Default MBS Items screenshot

If your consults don’t necessarily require the same MBS item, an alternative option is to have Bp Premier calculate the MBS item required based on the visit length. This option can again save time searching for MBS items when finalising a consult.

To set automatically calculated MBS items, select Setup > Preferences, again making sure that the correct practitioner is selected. Tick Calculate the MBS item in the finalise window and click Save and close.

The next time the provider selects Finalise visit in the patient record, the calculated MBS item will appear under Items to bill.

For more information, be sure to access our Knowledge Base for detailed instructions.

Simply open the Help menu from within Bp Premier, and click Online, and search for ‘default item’. Our team of Training Specialists are also here to support you with timesaving tips and tricks just like this one. You can find out more, or get in touch with us at our website.

Authored by:

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Jennifer Stewart
Content Developer at Best Practice Software

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Covid-19 and Mental Health – Tools to Help Support Struggling Patients

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Covid-19 and mental health challenges are, unfortunately, terms that have gone hand-in-hand over the past 2 years. Ongoing economic hardships, an alarming spike in syphilis cases and the drastic changes in drinking habits during extended lockdowns have all been put under the microscope as examples of the kinds of toll the pandemic has taken on our mental wellbeing.

Bp Premier features a number of clinical tools which can help. Let’s review some of them, and how they can assist you in supporting patients struggling at this time.

Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS 21)

The latest release of Bp Premier includes the DASS 21 Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) form, under the Clinical dropdown menu. (This is also where you can access the MMSE Mini Mental State Exam, and the Audit-C questionnaire.)

“DASS is a set of three self-report scales designed to measure the negative emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress. It was constructed … to further the process of defining, understanding, and measuring the ubiquitous and clinically significant emotional states usually described as depression, anxiety and stress.”

Covid-19 and Mental health DASS 21

Clinical Use of the DASS

“The principal value of the DASS in a clinical setting is to clarify the locus of emotional disturbance, as part of the broader task of clinical assessment. The essential function of the DASS is to assess the severity of the core symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress. It must be recognised that clinically depressed, anxious or stressed persons may well manifest additional symptoms that tend to be common to two or all three of the conditions, such as sleep, appetite, and sexual disturbances. These disturbances will be elicited by clinical examination, or by the use of general symptom check lists as required.”

“The DASS may be administered and scored by non-psychologists, but decisions based on particular score profiles should be made only by experienced clinicians who have carried out an appropriate clinical examination. It should be noted also that none of the DASS items refers to suicidal tendencies because items relating to such tendencies were found not to load on any scale. The experienced clinician will recognise the need to determine the risk of suicide in seriously disturbed person.”

Click here for a full overview of the DASS.

Recording Alcohol Use

When using Bp Premier to record alcohol use, in the Family and Social history tools > Alcohol heading, there are additional resources available to you to assist with diagnosis of alcohol dependency.

The CAGE questionnaire is a list of four simple questions to check for signs of alcohol dependence. The results are recorded in the Comments box on this screen:

  • Have you ever felt you needed to Cut down on your drinking?
  • Have people Annoyed you by criticising your drinking?
  • Have you ever felt Guilty about drinking?
  • Have you ever felt you needed a drink first thing in the morning (Eye-opener), to steady your nerves or to get rid of a hangover?

The AUDIT-C (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) is an alcohol screen that can help identify hazardous drinkers, or those who have active alcohol use disorders. It can also identify at-risk drinkers (e.g. binge drinkers) who may not be alcohol-dependent. It generates a score from 0-12, and there is a button to access explanatory notes to discus with your patients. You can also monitor changes over time.

Covid-19 and Mental Health Audit-C Screenshot

There is also a button to open a pop up a list of standard drinks sizes for beer, wine, and spirits, plus of course, Fact Sheets (button next to Preventative Health) and Patient Information leaflets (‘professor’ icon in shortcuts toolbar) where you can search by topic and print information and further resources for your patients.

Domestic Violence - Further Support Available for Patients at Risk

Also in the Family and Social History tools, if your patient responds “No” to the question, “Do you feel safe in your own home?” a pop up window will be displayed with contact details for 1800Respect confidential support service.

1800RESPECT will continue to operate as usual during COVID-19, and is open 24 hours to support people impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence and abuse. Patients can visit www.1800respect.org.au or call 1800 737 732 at any time.

Ordering Pathology - Setting Up Groups of Tests in Bp Premier

An unexpected event during the Covid-19 crisis has been an alarming spike in Syphilis cases in Australia, so GPs in some areas may be encountering a higher number of patients requiring sexual health checks.

You can save time by setting up ‘favourite’ groups of tests in Bp Premier. To access this, from the main menu, under the Setup dropdown menu > select Preferences > Pathology.

It is very simple to create groups of tests with a single shortcut, so you can generate a pathology request very quickly, e.g. for sexual health checks. To do this, first choose the name for the group, e.g. “STI Check”, then ADD each of the tests you wish to include. A routine STI screen might include these six common STIs detectable through blood and urine analysis: Chlamydia, Gonorrhoea, HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C.

Pathology Request

Recording Covid-19 Vaccinations Given Elsewhere

Another feature you may wish to use is recording Covid-19 vaccine status of your patients. To record vaccines given elsewhere, so they are listed in the patient record, click on the Immunisations heading under Clinical Tree, and ADD a new vaccine. Select which Covid vaccine your patient has received, then under Billing provider dropdown, select “Not given here”.

Vaccines recorded in this way will not be uploaded to AIR from your practice. You do not need to include batch number details, but you can note the date given for each vaccine in the series, and use the comments section to record where the vaccine was administered, e.g. at a Pharmacy or vaccine hub location.  You may wish to look at the patient’s vaccine certificate to verify details before recording information in their record.

Vaccination Screen Image

For patients returning from overseas, click here to provide them with information from Services Australia on getting help adding your overseas COVID-19 vaccinations to the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).

Further Information

Though a return to relatively normal life may be in sight for many of us, Covid-19 and mental health continues to be a focus for people still struggling for many reasons, including the ones we’ve touched on today.

Below are a number of helpful links that provide more information around these topics.

Authored by:

Stephanie Beames Blog Author Image

Stephanie Beames
Deployment & Training Specialist at Best Practice Software

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Managing Appointment Cancellations in your Practice

Managing Appointment Cancellations

Managing appointment cancellations is part of every practice’s daily tasks.

Bp Premier has some useful features to assist you in managing replacements for cancelled appointments and reducing their impact to your practice with our Waiting list for cancellations functionality.  This is built into the appointment book, and as of the Saffron SP 1 release, there have been some further enhancements to this functionality.  The benefit of using the cancellation list is that when an appointment is cancelled, you can quickly and easily replace this with another patient who has been added to the list.

There are two ways to add patients to your practice’s cancellation list, they can be added directly to the list, or added when booking an appointment for the future.  Let’s explore both of these in some further detail now.

Adding a Patient Directly to the Waiting List

If you are running Saffron SP 1 (released in June 2021) or later, a new feature has been introduced allowing you to add patients directly to your waiting list for cancellations without the need for a future booked appointments.  Simply open your practice’s waiting list from the Appointment book > View > Waiting list for cancellations, and click the Add to cancellation list button in the bottom left of the window.

To add this patient to the waiting list, simply:

  • Select an existing patient in your database (or add a new patient record)
  • Select the provider and location
  • Choose the appointment type and length
  • And specify the date required by
  • Click Add when information is complete.

Once added, this patient will remain on your waiting list for cancellations until the ‘Date required by’ that was specified.

Adding a Patient to the Waiting List When Booking a Future Appointment

In addition to manually adding a patient to the waiting list, you can also add a patient to waiting list at the same time as creating an appointment for the future. When adding the future appointment, after selecting and entering all of the relevant details, there are two checkboxes that you can use:

  • ‘Add to the waiting list for cancellation’ to add the appointment to the waiting list
  • and ‘Will see any provider for cancellation’ to indicate if the patient is willing to see any provider, not just the doctor that they are booked with, in the event that a cancellation occurs.
Managing Appointment Cancellations Image 1

Using the Waiting List for Cancellations

Patient appointments that have been added to your practice’s waiting list can be used to quickly replace cancelled appointments. Your practice staff can easily view the contact details for the patients on the waiting list, and immediately fill those vacancies from cancellations.  You can view all of the patients on your waiting list at any time from the Appointment book > View > Waiting list for cancellations.

Managing Appointment Cancellations Image 2

To streamline the process of managing appointment cancellations and save your team even more time, you can set the Patients awaiting cancellations screen to appear whenever an appointment is cancelled. This way, when an appointment is cancelled, your team will immediately a list of patients who may be eligible to replace that appointment, and are able to quickly access their contact information and replace that cancelled appointment. Incorporating this automation to the workflow gives your staff a chance to review the waiting list and fill in the available timeslots as soon as they are made available.

You can configure the automatic display of the cancellation list by completing the following steps:

  1. Select Setup > Configuration from the main Bp Premier screen.
  2. Select the Appointments tab.
  3. Tick the Show Cancellation list when an appointment is cancelled

In summary, the waiting list for cancellations is a fantastic tool that may help to fill vacant appointment slots when managing appointment cancellations, and can quickly provide you and your team the necessary information to allow you to do so. If you are interested in learning, access the Knowledge Base (Help>Online in Bp Premier), and search for ‘waiting list’.

Authored by:

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Bec Bland
Training & Deployment Leader at Best Practice Software

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