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Encounters
Open a service recording for patient interactions and add clinical items, record progress notes, prescribe medications, review investigations, write referrals and manage recalls.
Medications
This topic covers all Medications Management functionality within Communicare.
Prescribing
Use Communicare to prescribe medications.
Write Prescriptions
Use the Add Medication window, Write a Prescription tab when you want to write a prescription, print it and give it to a patient to fill outside your health service.
Emergency Provisions for PBS Authority Approval
In the event of natural disasters or other emergencies, prescribe medications so that they meet emergency provisions and patients can continue to access their essential medicines at the usual PBS or RPBS cost.

Encounters
Open a service recording for patient interactions and add clinical items, record progress notes, prescribe medications, review investigations, write referrals and manage recalls.
- Encounters
  Record patient encounters in Communicare using any one of the following methods.
- Medications
  This topic covers all Medications Management functionality within Communicare.
  - Medication Overview
    Displays all Prescription, Administer and Supply medication information for the selected patient.
  - Medication Management Configuration
    Medications management changed significantly in V21.2 and later. Before you upgrade from V19.2 and earlier, consider the configuration options available for medications management in Communicare.
  - Prescribing
    Use Communicare to prescribe medications.
    - Write Prescriptions
      Use the Add Medication window, Write a Prescription tab when you want to write a prescription, print it and give it to a patient to fill outside your health service.
      - Active Ingredient Prescribing
        Prescriptions created in Communicare V20.2 and later meet the requirements of the Active Ingredient Prescribing legislation (2019), which is mandatory from 1 February 2021.
      - Prescribing regular and STAT/PRN medication
        Occasionally you may need to supply or prescribe the same medication with the same strength as a regular medication, but with different dosage instructions.
      - Emergency Provisions for PBS Authority Approval
        In the event of natural disasters or other emergencies, prescribe medications so that they meet emergency provisions and patients can continue to access their essential medicines at the usual PBS or RPBS cost.
      - Unlisted repatriation authority
        Using unlisted repatriation authority, you can prescribe an authority script for a medication that is not listed on the PBS or RPBS for patients with a DVA (Department of Veterans' Affairs) number.
    - Create Medication Orders
      If you are a doctor, create a Medication Order for medication to be administered or supplied at your health service. If you are a nurse or health worker, create a medication order for the associated verbal or written order from an authorised provider.
    - Create Medication Orders from Prescriptions
      If you have written a prescription that is part of a Medication Request, and you need to supply some of the medication to the patient now to cover the period until the the pharmacy order is fulfilled and arrives for the patient, you can create a medication order from the prescription.
    - Finalise Prescriptions
      You can finalise prescriptions to send for ePrescribing, print or update without printing out prescriptions.
    - Medication Requests
      In Communicare V20.2 and later, you can create medication requests. Medication requests combine multiple medications on one prescription.
    - Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions
      Communicare can be configured for electronic transfer of prescriptions (ETP) to a central repository.
    - Print Prescriptions
      When you close the clinical record, you are prompted to finalise any prescriptions that haven't been finalised or printed that day.
    - Add Adverse Reactions
      Record an adverse reaction for a reaction a patient has to a substance of any sort.
    - Decision Support
      Communicare provides prescribing decision support based on clinical items with a valid ICPC-2 PLUS code and uses pharmaceutical content sourced from the MIMS drug database.
    - Stop a Medication
      You can discontinue a regular or once-off medication because the patient no longer takes this medication for whatever reason.
    - Stop Multiple Medications
      You can stop multiple current or expired regular and once-off medications simultaneously.
    - Repeat medications
      Create a repeat for medication orders or represcribe regular and once off prescriptions.
    - Represcribe multiple medications
      You can represcribe multiple current, regular and once off medications simultaneously and change the duration for all medications if required. You can also represcribe expired regular medications.
    - Make Medications Regular or Once-off
      If you decide that a patient should continue taking a once-off medication that you have previously prescribed, you can change it to a regular medication. Similarly, if you want to stop a regular medication after the current prescription, you can change it to a once-off medication.
    - Adjust Medications
      In V20.2 and later, you can adjust the duration of a medication. Use this feature to change the expiry date of the medication shown in Communicare when you want a patient to take more or less of a medication that has already been prescribed.
    - Delete Medications
      Delete a medication only if it was prescribed in error. If you no longer want a patient to take a prescribed medication, stop that medication instead.
    - Choose Streamlined Authority
      When a PBS medication is listed under the streamlined authority rules, a streamlined authority approval number is automatically added to a prescription.
    - Drug Browser
      In the Drug Browser, you can browse product information from the MIMS Pharmaceutical database.
    - Extemporaneous Preparations (Drug Recipes)
      Use Extemporaneous Preparations to define drug recipes for display in the drug browser and for use when prescribing medications.
    - Verbal Orders
      Verbal Orders are available when the Medication Management module is enabled.
    - Real time prescription monitoring
      If your site is integrated with eRx, Communicare can be configured so that whenever a monitored medicine is prescribed and the prescription is about to be saved, the information is validated by the state's real time prescription monitoring service against the National Data Exchange (NDE) using eRx.
  - Medication History
    Use Medication History to record current medications for a patient of your health service that your patient is taking but which may have been prescribed in hospital or at another service.
  - Administer and Supply Medication
    In Communicare V20.1 and later, the separate Supply and Administer functions are merged into a single Administer and Supply function. Use Administer and Supply to record the administration or supply of a medication, or both administration and supply of a medication during the current service.
  - Imprest Management
    Imprest Management allows management of the Imprest drug list and the Imprest orders.
  - Consolidated Orders
    Consolidated orders are groups of medication requests that have been requested from an external pharmacy.
- Clinical Support

Emergency Provisions for PBS Authority Approval

In the event of natural disasters or other emergencies, prescribe medications so that they meet emergency provisions and patients can continue to access their essential medicines at the usual PBS or RPBS cost.

To meet emergency provisions:

Do not prescribe with increased quantity
Do not increase repeats beyond the scheduled amount
Use the authority approval number of P9999Rx

Communicare will generate the authority script number as normal.

For more information, see https://www.pbs.gov.au/info/publication/factsheets/pbs-arrangements-natural-disasters-and-emergencies.

9 February 2024