V19.2 Release Notes

Release notes for V19.2.

V19.2, March 2021 - COVID-19 Immunisation clinical item changes

To allow COVID-19 immunisations to be uploaded to the AIR we've added two new fields to the Immunisation clinical item. Clinicians can:

  • Use the Serial Number field to record the serial number of the vaccine. For COVID-19 immunisations you can make inclusion of a serial number mandatory. For more information, see Clinical Item Type Properties.
  • Use the Administered overseas field instead of the Performed at current encounter place field to indicate historical immunisations that were performed overseas.

V19.2, December 2020 - Active Ingredient Prescribing update

Communicare V19.2 released in December 2020 meets the requirements of the Active Ingredient Prescribing legislation (2019), mandatory from 1 February 2021.

Generic prescribing is now mandatory in Communicare V19.2 by default.

The legislative changes require the inclusion of active ingredients on all Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Repatriation PBS (RPBS) prescriptions, except for handwritten prescriptions, medicinal items with four or more active ingredients and a number of other specified items included in LEMI and LMBC.

Prescribers may continue to include a brand name on prescriptions wherever clinically necessary for their patient. When you prescribe by brand, the format of the medication displayed in and printed from Communicare is now as follows:
generic strength form (BRAND_NAME)

The list of excluded medicinal items (LEMI) and list of medicines for brand consideration (LMBC) lists are also observed.

Prescriptions created before the introduction of active ingredient prescribing are displayed according to the new rules if doing so does not change the original intent of the prescriber.

For those medications on the LEMI, prescriptions created before the upgrade are displayed as intended by the original prescriber. However, if a prescription is reprinted, the format abides by the new rules for prescriptions.

For more information, see Active Ingredient Prescribing.

To meet the requirements of the legislation, set your Prescribing Options to Generic Prescribing. For more information, see System Parameters - Clinical.

Updates since Feb 2020

  • We've fixed a bug with the script that added vaccines where a locally-created vaccine already existed. For example, if you a have a local clinical item Immunisation;COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZenec, it will be renamed to Immunisation;COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZenec[1] when V19.2 is updated.
  • We've added a tip to Medication Details about how to display all options for equivalent active ingredient medications that have slightly different packaging or formulation.
  • We've fixed a bug that stopped you adding medications with names longer than 120 characters to a letter or care plan.
  • We've fixed a bug that stopped the Print window being displayed when the Communicare default printer was set to anything other than Windows default and the HCP printer assignment was set to the Communicare default.
  • We've updated relevant letter templates and reports.
  • We've fixed an SQL issue that occurred on login under some circumstances relating to specific database structures.
  • We've fixed a bug that stopped the 'Bring to Front' toolbar working when using Adverse Reactions or the Letter Template.
  • We've fixed a bug which meant that medications in a group where one medication was deleted from MIMS were missing from the drug browser.
  • We've fixed a bug where if a booking was made on the same day as the service, when a doctor saved the progress notes, the timestamp of the progress notes was the timestamp of the booking. The timestamp of the progress notes is now the timestamp of when the service is started, not the timestamp of the booking.
  • We've fixed a bug where there was problem on startup when the HI certificate was empty which gave an access violation error.
  • We've fixed a bug in private billing where you couldn't add a new payer to the patient record.
  • We've fixed a bug in care plans where the file size became too large if there were embedded images and the plans were lost.
  • We've fixed a bug with the HI Service which occurs when you have many clinical records open and may result in a "Parameter is incorrect" error.
  • We've fixed a bug where recalls created by a provider were being deleted when a recall rule was edited.
  • We've added support for PathWest's new HL7 structured numeric (SN) type for their lab results.
  • We've fixed a bug where not all medications were printing under certain circumstances.
  • We've updated the database validation routine to account for identical clinical items.
  • We've fixed a bug where Communicare didn't support authority numbers containing alphabetical characters.
  • We've fixed a bug where the nightly backup fails when the weekly backup is generated.
  • If a patient is deceased, we now display their deceased status in the patient details of S100 orders.
  • We've fixed a bug where users couldn't change their password, even though this option was enabled in user groups settings.
  • For MeHR, we've fixed an error that was displayed when a provider tried to Send CHP for a dual registered patient.

User Lock Conflicts

There is a new form under the Tools menu to resolve user lock conflicts. Users with systems administrator rights can access this form. The form will list all the users that are connected to Communicare to allow the user with the lock conflict to be disconnected. See User Lock Conflicts for more details.

Clinical Record

  • The Care Plan tab now shows when active care plans are present by changing the background colour of the icon.
  • The Progress Notes audit details have been adjusted so that they only record changes to the content or viewing right of the progress note.
  • An issue caused by closing new investigation requests with the 'X' button instead of the Save button has been resolved.

Clinical Item Types

The TTANGO clinical item now has a viewing right of Maternal and Sexual Health.

Service Recording

  • A progress note icon is displayed in the Service Recording window indicating whether any information is attached to the service that will prevent this service being deleted. The information can be a clinical item, prescription, adverse reaction, result, investigation request, progress note, lock conflict, Medicare or private billing claim, etc. A missing icon indicates that no information has been recorded for that service yet.
  • The Locate text box used to search for a provider in the Service Recording window is now fixed to search all providers and not just those following any selected provider.
  • An issue with the provider list scroll bar has been fixed.
  • Medicare claims with associated specialist services details no longer allow referral issue dates in the future.

Documents and Results

  • HL7 pathology results that are received containing a PDF document will now display correctly in the documents and results window.
  • Secondary ordering of documents and results by date has been restored when other columns are ordered.
  • An issue preventing the matching of specific types of incoming CDA documents to a patient has been resolved.
  • Ordering Provider column added to Investigation Results tab.

Patient Summary Report

The Patient Summary report can now also export all documents related to a patient. Use the Customise button to include or exclude documents. When printing you will be asked to specify a folder in which to place the documents. See Patient Summary for more details.

Scheduled reports

  • Date parameters now resolve the date correctly when configuring a new scheduled report.
  • Dropdown box values that were not appearing because the report defined the parameter not in uppercase are now working correctly (this affected scheduled nKPI reports).
  • Scheduling options that stopped working after the upgrade to version 18.3 (e.g. reports scheduled for 31 day of the month that failed to run when the month had fewer than 31 days) are now working correctly.

Prescribing

  • Prescribers can no longer record a medication with a date after a patient’s date of death. Medication Dispense, Supply, Administer options are disabled for deceased patients.
  • The Health Centre Prescription messages on closing the clinical record have further been refined to exclude messages to regenerate the HCP when a patient no longer has any regular medications.

MIMS Interaction Warnings

A new graphical representation of drug interaction severity ratings has been added to the Medications Warnings window and is displayed if there are any interactions when prescribing or dispensing. See Medication All Warnings for more information and descriptions of the severity warnings.

eRx SafeScript Integration

eRx SafeScript Integration or Real-time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM) is now available. A check box added to the Clinical tab of System Parameters for Prescribing options, to activate the feature. See Real-Time_Prescription_Monitoring for more details.

Currently, Safescript is only required for Victoria. See the website for further details.

EPD Integration

The existing HSD (Human Services directory) Address Book integration module is replaced with the EPD (Enterprise Provider Directory) Address Book integration. To use EPD integration, the EDP URL and API Key must be entered under File \> System Parameters \> Web services tab. There are slight changes in Address Book Search filter criteria in EPD.

Titanium HL7

A change has been made to patient details sent from Communicare to the Titanium dental software program to identify the patient details as coming from Communicare. This is to support health services where other software is interfacing with Titanium.

My Health Record

  • The document list in MyHR now defaults to view all documents rather than just Shared Health Summary Documents
  • Defaulting patients with MyHR to consent to upload unless revoked is now working correctly.

Reference Tables

  • The Session Template Repeat Value now appears as 'Weekly', 'Fortnightly', etc. rather than 1, 2, etc. when browsing.
  • Applying a template to the appointments book now uses the previously set date correctly.

Data Synchronisation

An issue whereby the Last Synch Upload date time label was updated when there was nothing to upload has been corrected.

Stability

A wide range of enhancements to improve stability of the program have been implemented. These improvements include better handling of unforeseen errors as well as defect fixing and various mitigation strategies. The include:
  • Fix out of memory error message appearing under some conditions when merging patients
  • Improve Appointments Generator stability
  • Improve Intramail performance
  • Improve performance of MyHR at end of service

System Passwords

The Communicare administrator may request changes to the password used to protect the backup zip files. See System Passwords for more information.

New Central Clinical Items and Reports

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 - enter the date of the upgrade.

.Net Requirements

In order for Communicare to run .Net 4.5.2 or greater needs to be installed.