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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.
Biographics
Medicare details
Communicare performs validations to check that a patient's Medicare details are correct.

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
    - Biographics
      Personal information about a patient is recorded in patient records in Communicare. Use the Patient Biographics window to add, edit and review patients' personal information.
    - Changing Biographics
      You can update a patient's existing data, including their Medicare details, and add new patient names and patient addresses to a patient record.
    - Reviewing Biographics
      Review patients' biographic data regularly and particularly after patient records have been merged.
    - Printing Blank Biographics Forms
    - Medicare details
      Communicare performs validations to check that a patient's Medicare details are correct.
  - 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 pop-up 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.

Medicare details

Communicare performs validations to check that a patient's Medicare details are correct.

Patient Biographics

In the Change Person Details window, on the Personal tab, the Medicare verification status is displayed.

The most recent, saved, Medicare verification status is displayed in the Medicare pane:

Unknown - never validated. To verify the patient's Medicare details, click Check Card Online.
Valid - the Medicare details were valid at the date shown in the Last Validated field.
Error - Communicare could not connect to Services Australia. The date of the previous check is shown in the Last Validated field.

Tip: Out-of-date or incomplete Medicare information is highlighted in yellow. The following information must be included in the biographics for an OPV check to occur:

Name
Date of birth
Sex
Medicare card number or reference number

You can manually check the Medicare details of a single patient in their patient record:

Click Patient Biographics to open the patient search, and enter the patient's name.
Double-click the required patient or select the patient and click Change Details.
On the Change Person Details > Personal tab, in the Medicare section, click Check Card Online.

The patient's Medicare card number is sent to Services Australia using OPV and is validated against the details that Medicare holds.

In the Service Recording list, patient search, or other patient lists, for patients whose Medicare Card details are incorrect or incomplete, a Incomplete Medicare details icon green card icon with a red slash through it is displayed. For patients with a valid Medicare card or whose details have been verified with Services Australia but with suggestions, no icon is displayed.

9 February 2024