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Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
Patients
Communicare uses the term Patient to refer to the clients of a health service.
Recording the death of a patient
In Communicare, record when a patient dies. Deceased patients are excluded from many reports but will continue to be included if not marked as deceased.

Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
- Patients
  Communicare uses the term Patient to refer to the clients of a health service.
  - Biographics
  - Information Sharing Consent
    Health Services have access to any information they have recorded internally. If you have a single database in your organisation used by multiple health services, you can also share information recorded by other health services with the clients' consent.
  - Patient Search
    Use the patient search to select and work with the patient's record, or create a new record.
  - Browse For Duplicate Patient Records
    Use Browse For Duplicate Records to locate all patient records that could be duplicates, based on name, sex and date of birth.
  - Adding a New Patient
    When a patient first makes contact with your encounter place, and before you provide a service to that patient, add a patient record.
  - Current Status
    Use Current status to indicate a person's primary relationship to your health service.
  - Group Memberships
    Use the Group Membership window to review the dates on which a patient joined or exited a group.
  - Deleting a Patient
    You can delete fictitious patients from Communicare.
  - Duplicate patient checks
    When a patient is added to Communicare, a series of checks are done in an attempt to identify and prevent duplicate entries.
  - Recording the death of a patient
    In Communicare, record when a patient dies. Deceased patients are excluded from many reports but will continue to be included if not marked as deceased.
  - Patient Merge
    When a patient has been recorded twice in Communicare, use Patient Merge to combine the two records.
  - Patient alert
    If an alert is added to a patient's biographic information, a popup alert is displayed when the patient's record is opened.
  - Background Work window
    The background work window is displayed when Communicare is busy and you must wait for the described background process to complete before proceeding with other actions.
  - Registering patients with MHR
    If the My Health Record Assisted Registration module is enabled in System Rights and you belong to a user group with the My Health Record Assisted Registration system right, you can register patients with My Health Record.
- Appointments
  Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
- Transport
  Communicare offers two ways of managing transport services.

Recording the death of a patient

In Communicare, record when a patient dies. Deceased patients are excluded from many reports but will continue to be included if not marked as deceased.

To record a patient's death, you must belong to a user group with the Clinical Records system right.

All saved changes to a patient's deceased date (and therefore their deceased status) are logged to the database for auditing purposes.

To record the death of a patient:

Select Patient > Death.
In the Patient Search window, search for and select the patient.
In the patient's record, from the Date of death calendar, select when the patient died. If you don't know the exact date, select an approximate date and set Date uncertain.
From the Cause of death list, select a category. The list is based on the NT Coroner's report of common reasons for death (2017).
In the Comment field, add any other pertinent information.
From the Death Notification Source list, select how you were notified of the death of the patient.
From the Death Verified list, after verifying that the patient is dead, select Yes.
In the Contributing factors section, add any contributing factors if required:
1. In the first row, from the list select a contributing factor, for example, Smoking.
2. Click Add. A new row is added at the top of the section. From the list select a contributing factor, for example, Age.
3. Repeat step b until all factors are recorded.
Click Save.

The patient is recorded as deceased and does not appear in patient searches unless you set Include deceased.

Correcting Mistakes

If a patient is incorrectly marked as deceased, you can reverse the record.

To reinstate a patient:

Select Patient > Death.
In the Patient Search, set Include deceased, enter the full patient's name and select the patient.
In the patient's record, delete any contributing factors, comments, death notification source, verification, or cause of death.
Delete the date of death.
Click Save.

The patient is now no longer marked as deceased.

14 November 2023