V21.2 Release Notes

Communicare V21.2 includes new integrations with the Provider Directory Service and The George Institute. It also includes changes to secure messaging and My Health Record uploads to comply with new ADHA standards. V21.2 also includes minor enhancements and bug fixes.

Prerequisites

Because of the schema changes associated with the medications changes made in V20.1 and later, all customers upgrading from V19.2 and earlier should run the following report before upgrading to V21.2 and resolve any issues: Unprescribed Regular Medications.

Note: If you are upgrading from V19.2 and earlier and have any custom reports that use medications tables or views directly, ensure you check Database Schema changes in the V20.2 release notes. If you are affected, discuss migration options with Communicare Support.

New features

ADHA Provider Directory Service integration

You can now search the Provider Directory Service (PDS) for an individual or organisation listed with the ADHA and create a record in your local address book which remains synchronised with the PDS.

To use the PDS search, your clinic must configure the PDS service and enable the Address Book Integration - ADHA PDS module. For more information, see Modules. Any users must belong to a user group that has the Address Book Maintenance system right.

For more information, see Provider Directory Service.

Secure messaging enhancements

We've made a number of changes to the handling of secure messages for ADHA compliance:
  • You can now generate and send a letter or referral as a PDF.
  • Support for incoming documents and results in CDA (MDM V2.3.1) and PDF (REF V2.4) formats.
  • Support for incoming imaging and pathology results sent by the investigation provider as HL7 ORU (HL7, HTML, PDF).
  • Acknowledgements are sent for every message received.
  • Outbound documents are sent using HL7 V2.4 REF messages.
  • Acknowledgements are processed for messages we send and any errors are displayed in Documents & Results for practice managers to review.

You can now also generate a list of installed certificates with unknown expiry dates, or that will expire in the next 60 days. Run the NASH Certificate Expiry report.

My Health Record integration changes

For ADHA compliance, we've changed the IHI validation. When Communicare starts, connectivity with the My Health Record is no longer tested and functions that might have been disabled if there was no connectivity are not affected. Patient IHI numbers are instead validated when Communicare uploads the documents to the My Health Record, so if a patient does not have an IHI, you will not be able to upload their documents.

You can now also generate My Health Record documents in the Offline Client. These documents are then uploaded to the My Health Record after Offline Clients are synchronised to the online client.

NCSR integration

Communicare now integrates with the National Cancer Screening Register (NCSR).

If a patient has any alerts in the NCSR database, an alert count and link are displayed in the banner in the patient record. The link takes clinicians to the NCSR hub where further information is available.

To display the NCSR alerts in Communicare, your clinic must configure the NCSR integration and enable the NCSR Integration module. Any clinicians who want to see the NCSR information must belong to a user group that has the NCSR Integration system right.

For more information, see National Cancer Screening Register.

The George Institute integration

Communicare can be integrated with The George Institute HealthTracker™, a tool that provides a "clinically validated decision support system for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and kidney diseases".

Clinicians can use the Communicare HealthTracker to generate an interactive health risk assessment which shows recommendations based on guidelines. They can demonstrate to patients how reducing a risk factor such as smoking can affect that patient's risk and provide tailored advice to patients to assist with the management and prevention of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and chronic kidney disease.

The interactive report uses the qualifiers and measurements recorded in the George Institute HealthTracker clinical item.

For more information, see HealthTracker.

Minor enhancements

V21.2 includes the following minor enhancements:
  • DAA values are now included with the dosage instructions in the Patient Summary report, care plans and in letters when you add Clinical Record > Current/Regular Medication to a letter in the Letter Writer.
  • Clinical Decision Support is now available in the Communicare Demo V21.1 and later by default.
  • In response to MIMS changes we now support active unit names of up to 50 characters. For example, billion viral particles.
  • The Communicare installer now checks what version of .Net is installed and warns if it is not .Net 4.8.
  • We've added some extra fields to templates:
    • Dispense Label template - if a patient's date of birth is available, it is now displayed next to the patient's name
    • Medication Request template:
      • Added medication type with text of either Once off or Regular
      • If the medication is expired, text of Expired is added, otherwise this field is left blank
  • We've added an index to patient_adverse_reaction to improve performance when querying the table.
  • When you represcribe multiple medications (bulk represcribe), if your health service is set up for Real-Time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM), and the medication is a controlled medicine, Communicare sends information to the Safescript service on the internet. Safescript results are then displayed for each drug prescribed. For more information, see RTPM.
  • You can now choose to display a child's height/length and weight on Centile Charts that use either the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or World Health Organisation (WHO) reference data. Head circumference is available only with the WHO reference data. For more information, see Centile Chart.
  • Documents exported as part of the Patient Summary now have more descriptive filenames so that they can be more easily identified. For more information, see Patient Summary.
  • In patients' clinical records, we've updated the AIR iconAIR link in the clinical record to jump to the new PRODA website.
  • For RIVeR systems, allergies recorded in a patient's clinical record are now automatically printed in the Clinical Details section on the medical imaging request form. For more information, see Investigation Requests.
  • When creating an imaging investigation request, you can now indicate if the patient is breastfeeding or is an infection risk and add infection details. This information is automatically transferred to the request form. For more information, see Investigation Requests.
  • For most clients, clinical notes only up to 145 characters are printed in the Clinical Notes field on the investigations template. Any additional notes are printed on a new page. For some enterprise customers, the Clinical Notes field has been extended to 200 characters. If your health service requires more than 145 characters for theClinical Notes field, contact Communicare Support.
  • For decision support, we've changed when CDS service availability warnings are displayed when you add a pregnancy or condition clinical item to a patient's clinical record. Warnings are no longer displayed if the CDS service is unavailable when you add procedure and history clinical items, unless the items have a full ICPC-2 PLUS code. For condition clinical items, a warning is displayed if the CDS service is unavailable or if the item does not have a full ICPC-2 PLUS code. For more information, see Decision Support.
  • Communicare now uploads results received in HTML format to MeHR, in addition to PDF and plain text.
  • In V21.1, to address inconsistent timestamps, we changed to 24-hour time format wherever a timestamp is used, regardless of the system setting on your workstation. The only exception to this is the content of SMS texts sent to patients from Communicare, which display 12-hour format. We've also removed seconds from the timestamp where it is not needed, such as:
    • Session selection start and end times
    • In the clinical record, assessment date for adverse reactions
    • Appointment book
    • Imprest management

Central Data changes

You can review new clinical items and reports using these reports:
  • Report > Reference Tables > Clinical Item Types Added - enter the days since the upgrade and choose Central.
  • Report > Database Consistency > Central Reports

Bug fixes

V21.2 includes the following bug fixes:
  • We've fixed the error that occurred when a new user attempted to login with an inactive user login.
  • For MeHR-registered patients, when you end a service, the appropriate MeHR options are set by default in the Service exit window.
  • Measurements in the Observations Summary in letters are now displayed in the same order as in the Qualifier Summary in the clinical record.
  • If you add an adverse reaction for the medication you are prescribing from the Add Medication window, a reaction warning is now displayed.
  • We've corrected the medication data passed to eRx.
  • We've fixed a problem that occurred if you deleted a medication which was part of an active medication request.
  • We've fixed a column size issue with the database consistency check
  • We've fixed a problem where the Qualifier Type window remains open after closing a care plan.
  • We've added error messages to handle when users try to repeat regular medications that are included in the current medication request and have been supplied. Regular medications that have been created, a medication request raised and the medication supplied in the current service cannot be repeated or represcribed.
  • We've fixed a bug where the Medication Order you created from a prescription and edited after saving showed a duration of 0 days.
  • We've fixed a problem that was stopping you from searching the EPD.
  • We've fixed a bug where previous measurements weren't being displayed for clinical items with a qualifier of type memo.
  • We've added support for long medication names so that the database can be upgraded.
  • We've fixed a problem with the MIMS importer so that it handles MIMS double-quotes.
  • We've fixed a problem with the Letter Template printing with incorrect patient details.
  • We've fixed a problem where the wrong RTPM alert was displayed for high quantities of a medication.
  • We've removed the age scaling information from the Help, which was incorrect.
  • We've fixed a bug that prevented secure messages being received when PDS was enabled but the FHIR server couldn't be contacted. Now if PDS is enabled but the FHIR server cannot be reached, an error is logged in Communicare_installation/Logs/CCareQueue_Smd.log.
  • We've fixed a bug with the Documents and Results window being slow to load for larger organisations with a number of encounter places and many documents matched to providers. The window now opens quickly and we've removed the 100 results display limit that we previously set.
  • We've fixed a bug with the Letter Writer being slow to open for letters using the Clinical Record > Current/Regular Medication or Regular Medication option.
  • We've fixed a bug that stopped you finalising prescriptions when represcribing medications that didn't have a DAA type.

Installation Requirements

  • Communicare V21.2 is supported on Windows 10 and later and Windows Server 2016 and later. Security and other updates from Microsoft must be installed as they become available.
  • .Net 4.8 or later is required
  • Java Runtime Environment 1.8.0_202 for uploading to the AIR
  • HQBird 2.5.9 is now an external dependency. Firebird 2.5 and earlier is no longer supported.