Version 3.5

A feature rich prescribing module has been added to Communicare version 3.5. MIMS Pharmaceutical Database includes MIMS “full product information” which is accessible at the touch of a button. Current medication is displayed on the clinical summary page of each client’s clinical record. Regular medication can be easily re-prescribed. Prescriptions can be reprinted when necessary. Tamper resistant system allows only logical deletion of prescription records and requires a “reason for deletion” to be entered. Drugs can be browsed by product group, product name, brand, generic or indication. A condition can be selected from (or added to) the clinical record as a “reason for prescribing”. Smart auto-replacement text system simplifies dosage instructions. For example, “1 tds” translates to “one three times a day”. An extensive table of “dosage instructions” is provided. Additional instructions can be user defined.

New Access rights have been created for ‘Clinical Reporting’ and ‘Patient Deletion’ to allow greater control over which users can perform these functions. · The ‘Clinical Reporting’ right allows users to print clinical reports without necessarily having the right to access management reports. · The ‘Patient Deletion’ right allows users to delete and merge patients.

The buttons on the toolbar now have captions to make them easier for new users to understand. The selected default provider name, encounter mode and encounter place are now displayed in a status bar under the button. Double clicking the status bar allows the defaults to be changed. This helps make Communicare’s default settings more obvious. Both the button captions and the status bar can be suppressed by a selection on the tools menu. Suppressing either or both of these features maximises the amount of screen space available for other windows.

The patient's biographics now includes telephone numbers for work and mobile phones. The patient search now displays the new phone number and the current address locality name. Medicare number cleaning. Some Medicare numbers have been found to be lacking the last digit, making them invalid. As a part of this upgrade, these numbers have had a ‘1’ added and the reference number set to blank. In most cases this results in a valid number. Any numbers that are still invalid are set to blank. A list of all the numbers changed like this is available in SiteId_Ccare_115.txt.

When adding or changing a clinical item, definitions can now be viewed in the large ‘view’ window by simply double clicking in the definition box. The right click menu ‘view’ option is still available. The clinical summary window now has an additional panel for a summary of qualifiers. This pane lists the latest values for any eligible qualifiers. Qualifiers are made eligible for listing by ticking the new ‘Summary’ tick-box in the (reference tables) Qualifier maintenance window. This feature allows current qualifier information for important measurements (EG BMI, Blood Pressure) viewed instantly on opening any patient’s clinical record. The hospital morbidity ‘date of separation’ now defaults to the end date of the associated service record. This makes for slightly easier data entry.

A service record is now required for all clinical items and prescriptions. This provides: · An audit trail of who authorised each item of a clinical record. · A reliable way of “catching” every patient contact for reporting purposes. Service records can now be created “on the fly” from within the clinical record. In many situations this simplifies operation considerably and removes the need for a clinician to access the “service recording” window. For reasons of security, providers can now only be changed when a service is either ‘Booked’ or ‘Waiting’. Once a service has started, the provider cannot be changed. Any number of providers can now be associated with a single service. · A check-box list of all active providers is displayed to allow selection by simply ticking a box. · A locate feature is also included to allow easy location of a provider name if the list is long. · To make it easy to see the currently selected providers they are automatically moved to the top of the list

The Patient Import program has been expanded to include ‘administration notes’, special checkbox 1’ and ‘record storage site’. This improvement allows a more comprehensive biographics import to be performed.

New Query Builder sample queries break down biographic data by sex and age group. Any data can now be easily analysed by ages in weeks, months or years as of any given reference date. Address ‘to’ date. A ‘to’ date has been added to the patient address table to make ‘point in time’ queries easier. The new date is maintained automatically so there is no additional user input required.

The value of the patient ‘Special Check-Box’ is now displayed in the search window.

Version 4.1 AN-DRG codes have been added for Coordinated Care hospital morbidity recording.

The data dictionary is now accessible from within Communicare’s on-line help. Each of the Query Builder sample queries is now documented within Communicare’s on-line help.

A new tab has been added to the System Parameters form to allow custom positioning of reports on individual printers. This feature allows precise positioning of printed text on forms that require exact text placement – for example prescriptions and labels.