Glossary
Active medication
For prescribed regular medications, medications that are not expired, stopped or
deleted.
Administer
The act of applying a medication directly to a patient. For example, when a nurse
gives a patient an injection.
Administrative Encounter Place
A group of encounter places defined for administrative or reporting
purposes.
Biographics
General information about a patient, such as names, addresses,
Medicare Number, and so on.
Class
A group of clinical item types that have common properties and attributes or data
values.
Clinical item
A record of any event on a patient record, either actual or a planned recall, such as a disease, immunisation, procedure, medication prescribed, and so on. Clinical Items in Communicare are coded according to ICPC-2 PLUS.
Clinical item keywords
Specific words that can be used to locate Clinical Item types.
DAA
Dose Administration Aid (DAA) is the term used for packaging that organises doses
of medication according to when they should be taken.
Dataset
A collection of related clinical item types, qualifiers and recall
types.
Encounter
A meeting between a health provider and a patient.
Encounter mode
Either the means of delivering a health service, for example "Telephone"; or the
type of physical place at which a health service is delivered, for example,
"School".
Encounter place
Either a Service Encounter Place, where patient contacts occur; or an
Administrative Encounter Place, a concept that defines a group of encounter places for
administrative or reporting purposes. The Service Encounter Place is the physical place
at which a service is delivered, or the physical place from which a service is
delivered, for example, Millennium Health Service Clinic. Each place is categorised into
one or more Modes.
Episode
When a condition is diagnosed it may be classified as a FIRST, NEW, or ONGOING
episode.
Health Centre Prescribing
Health Centre Prescribing (HCP) or Rural Prescribing is a workflow used in the NT,
where instead of PBS scripts, a single consolidated script is printed for all regular
medications for a patient.
LEMI
From Active Ingredient Prescribing legislation, a list of excluded medicinal items
(LEMI) for which Communicare does not include the generic components. The LEMI includes
non-medicinal items such as bandages, or medications with four or more active
ingredients.
LMBC
From Active Ingredient Prescribing legislation, a list of medicines for brand
consideration (LMBC), for which providers should consider prescribing by brand. For
example, medications that are not bioequivalent.
Locality
A list of places used in patient addresses. Initial localities are taken from
Australia Post localities, but additional localities may be defined, for example, for a
local community.
Locality group
Where several localities are combined for reporting purposes. For example,
Northern Region, South of River, Inner City, and so on.
Medication request
Medication requests combine a patient's medications into a bulk-order prescription
for sending to a pharmacy for dispensing.
Medication summary
A list of a patient's currently active medications.
Mode
See Encounter mode.
Once off medication
A medication typically prescribed for acute clinical presentations, which the
patient will take until the course is complete. Once off medications are removed from
the Medication Summary after their duration has elapsed. Once off medications may also
be described as Short Course medications.
Place
See Encounter place.
Provider
Anyone who provides health care for a patient, such as a doctor, health worker,
nurse, and so on.
Qualifier
A measurement associated with a Clinical Item
Query
An instruction to retrieve statistics from the database.
Regular medication
A medication typically prescribed for a chronic disease, which the patient would
be expected to take continually. Regular medications are displayed on the Medication
Summary until they are explicitly stopped.
Report
The results of a query about data in the database.
Service recording
A record of a patient's services, such as clinic visits, home visits or
other.
Supply
The act of providing medication to a patient or their carer.
Topic
A grouping of Clinical Items into health or medical-related categories.
Walk-in patient
Patients who arrive without an appointment.