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Encounters
Open a service recording for patient interactions and add clinical items, record progress notes, prescribe medications, review investigations, write referrals and manage recalls.
Clinical Support
Investigations and documents
Communicare receives pathology and imaging results, letters and other documents electronically and sends documents and letters electronically using HL7 messages.
Documents
Documents are the electronic reflection of printed material that is important enough to be recorded in the patient's file. Usually a clinician will want to scan documents into Communicare that cannot be encoded using normal clinical items.
Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)
Communicare can send and receive CDA documents.
CDA Third Party Storage
Instead of sending CDA documents like the Event Summary and Shared Health Summary to My Health Record directly, some large health services may use a private repository.
Configuring use of a private CDA repository
Follow these steps to configure Communicare to save CDA documents to a private repository.

Encounters
Open a service recording for patient interactions and add clinical items, record progress notes, prescribe medications, review investigations, write referrals and manage recalls.
- Encounters
  Record patient encounters in Communicare using any one of the following methods.
- Medications
  This topic covers all Medications Management functionality within Communicare.
- Clinical Support
  - Investigations and documents
    Communicare receives pathology and imaging results, letters and other documents electronically and sends documents and letters electronically using HL7 messages.
    - Documents and results
      Use the Documents and Results window to display internal, incoming and outgoing documents and incoming results for any patient at your service.
    - Investigations
    - Documents
      Documents are the electronic reflection of printed material that is important enough to be recorded in the patient's file. Usually a clinician will want to scan documents into Communicare that cannot be encoded using normal clinical items.
      - Browsing documents
        Use the Browse Documents window to process scanned documents and manage letters including scanning new documents, writing new letters and viewing, deleting and amending details (but not the scanned image or the date) attached to a document.
      - Scanning documents
        You can scan new documents directly from the main toolbar or from within a Clinical Record.
      - Reviewing documents
        You can review incoming or scanned documents from a patient's clinical record or more generally from Documents and Results.
      - Writing letters and referrals
        You can write letters and referrals from a patient's clinical record. You can also write letters from Documents and Results or from File > Documents.
      - Read-only documents
        Read-only documents in Communicare cannot be modified under any circumstances.
      - Deleting documents
        Use the Browse Documents window to delete documents.
      - Letter viewer
        Use the Letter Viewer to view the contents of a document without printing it.
      - Selecting a template
        Use this window to select a template.
      - Attachments
        You can attach clinical and related documents sourced from email or elsewhere to a patient's clinical record as PDF documents.
      - Sending and Receiving Documents
        Using Communicare you can send and receive documents and results electronically.
      - Clinical Document Architecture (CDA)
        Communicare can send and receive CDA documents.
        Discharge Summaries
        Communicare can create and send Discharge Summaries either in the CDA format (compliant with eHealth standards in Australia) or in a less constrained RTF format. RTF format Discharge Summaries cannot be sent to MeHR, whereas CDA format documents can be sent to either My Health Record or MeHR.
        eReferrals
        Communicare can create and send eReferrals in the CDA format compliant with eHealth standards in Australia.
        Event Summaries
        Communicare creates Event Summaries in the CDA format compliant with eHealth standards in Australia. Event summaries can then be uploaded to My Health Record or an internal CDA repository.
        Shared Health Summaries
        Communicare creates Shared Health Summaries in the CDA format compliant with eHealth standards in Australia. Shared Health Summaries can then be uploaded to My Health Record or an internal CDA repository.
        CDA Third Party Storage
        Instead of sending CDA documents like the Event Summary and Shared Health Summary to My Health Record directly, some large health services may use a private repository.
        Configuring use of a private CDA repository
        Follow these steps to configure Communicare to save CDA documents to a private repository.
        Saving documents to a private repository
        Follow these steps to save CDA documents to a private repository.
  - Referral Management
    Manage incoming internal and external referrals from a single list.
  - Birth Notifications
    For customers who belong to the Western Australian Country Health Service, use the Birth Notifications module to manage notifications related to births from a single list.
  - Recalls
    Recalls are the elements that make up a care plan. Recalls can be either generated automatically by Communicare or manually created by the user.
  - Datasets
    Datasets are a user-friendly coding system, giving health professionals a standardised way to record data and report on data entered in a patient’s clinical record.

Configuring use of a private CDA repository

Follow these steps to configure Communicare to save CDA documents to a private repository.

The following configuration is required before summaries can be generated:

Encounter places must have a valid HPI-O configured.
The current Provider must have a valid HPI-I that is linked to their Communicare login username
NASH Org Certificate matching the encounter place's HPI-O. The NASH certificate is used to sign the CDA document.

To configure Communicare to save CDA documents to a private repository, complete the following steps:

Disable My Health Record access:
1. Log into Communicare as an administrator.
2. Select File > System Parameters, System tab.
3. In the modules list, deselect My Health Record Access.
Enable use of the private repository:
1. On the System tab, in the modules list, set Third Party CDA.
2. On the Web Services tab, ensure that Enable HI Service is set.
3. On the Integration tab, in the Private repository name field, enter the name of your private repository.
4. On the Integration tab, if you don't want to include patient addresses and phone numbers in the generated XML documents, deselect Include patient contact details. Patient contact details are not displayed in the rendered summaries, but are included in the XML source if this option is set.
5. Click Save.
6. Enter your authority code provided by Communicare Support.
7. Restart Communicare.
Set certificates:
1. Select File > Organisation Maintenance.
2. Open your health service and on the Certificates tab, in the HI Certificate field, select your HI certificate.
3. Click Save.
Grant access to the module to user groups:
1. Select File > User Groups.
2. Select the user group that you want to grant access to.
3. On the System Rights tab, set Third Party CDA.
4. Click Save.

You can now generate and save CDA Event Summaries and Shared Health Summaries to your private CDA repository.

14 November 2023