Glossary

Active medication

For prescribed regular medications, medications that are not expired, stopped or deleted.

Administer

The act of applying a medication directly to a patient. For example, when a nurse gives a patient an injection.

Administrative Encounter Place

A group of encounter places defined for administrative or reporting purposes.

AIR Encounter

A visit to a vaccination provider where one or more episodes (vaccines) are administered to the patient.

AIR Episode

The actual immunisation provided to the patient, by the vaccination provider. An AIR Encounter must have a minimum of one episode, and a maximum of five episodes.

Biographics

General information about a patient, such as names, addresses, Medicare Number, and so on.

Class

A group of clinical item types that have common properties and attributes or data values.

Clinical item

A record of any event on a patient record, either actual or a planned recall, such as a disease, immunisation, procedure, medication prescribed, and so on. Clinical Items in Communicare are coded according to ICPC-2 PLUS.

Clinical item keywords

Specific words that can be used to locate Clinical Item types.

Consolidated order

Groups of medication requests used to order medications from an external pharmacy and to manage patient-specific inventory.

DAA

Dose Administration Aid (DAA) is the term used for packaging that organises doses of medication according to when they should be taken.

Dataset

A collection of related clinical item types, qualifiers and recall types.

Encounter

A meeting between a health provider and a patient.

Encounter mode

Either the means of delivering a health service, for example Telephone; or the type of physical place at which a health service is delivered, for example, School.

Encounter place

Either a Service Encounter Place, where patient contacts occur; or an Administrative Encounter Place, a concept that defines a group of encounter places for administrative or reporting purposes. The Service Encounter Place is the physical place at which a service is delivered, or the physical place from which a service is delivered, for example, Millennium Health Service Clinic. Each place is categorised into one or more Modes.

Episode

When a condition is diagnosed it may be classified as a FIRST, NEW, or ONGOING episode.

Health Centre Prescribing

Health Centre Prescribing (HCP) or Rural Prescribing is a workflow used in the NT, where instead of PBS scripts, a single consolidated script is printed for all regular medications for a patient.

Immunisation Provider

The provider who administered a vaccine to an individual.

Last consolidated order date

For the encounter place, the most recent date at which a consolidated order was ordered.

LEMI

From Active Ingredient Prescribing legislation, a list of excluded medicinal items (LEMI) for which Communicare does not include the generic components. The LEMI includes non-medicinal items such as bandages, or medications with four or more active ingredients.

LMBC

From Active Ingredient Prescribing legislation, a list of medicines for brand consideration (LMBC), for which providers should consider prescribing by brand. For example, medications that are not bioequivalent.

Locality

A list of places used in patient addresses. Initial localities are taken from Australia Post localities, but additional localities may be defined, for example, for a local community.

Locality group

Where several localities are combined for reporting purposes. For example, Northern Region, South of River, Inner City, and so on.

Medication request

Medication requests combine a patient's medications into a bulk-order prescription for sending to a pharmacy for dispensing.

Medication summary

A list of a patient's currently active medications.

National Cancer Screening Register

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

Once-off medication

A medication typically prescribed for acute clinical presentations, which the patient will take until the course is complete. Once-off medications are removed from the Medication Summary after their duration has elapsed. Once off medications may also be described as Short-Course medications.

Provider

Anyone who provides health care for a patient, such as a doctor, health worker, nurse, and so on.

Qualifier

A measurement associated with a Clinical Item. In investigation results, laboratories refer to results and HL7 refers to observations.

Query

An instruction to retrieve statistics from the database.

Regular medication

A medication typically prescribed for a chronic disease, which the patient would be expected to take continually. Regular medications are displayed on the Medication Summary until they are explicitly stopped.

Report

The results of a query about data in the database.

Service recording

A record of a patient's services, such as clinic visits, home visits or other.

Supply

The act of providing medication to a patient or their carer.

Topic

A grouping of Clinical Items into health or medical-related categories.

Vaccine Provider

A medical practitioner or person who is recognised by Services Australia as being a provider of vaccinations to individuals, according to the Australian Immunisation Register Act 2015.

Walk-in patient

Patients who arrive without an appointment.