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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.
Clinical Support
Datasets
Datasets are a user-friendly coding system, giving health professionals a standardised way to record data and report on data entered in a patient’s clinical record.
Primary Mental Health Care
Many Communicare health services are required to submit data relating to primary mental health contacts to the Government via their local Primary Health Network. Communicare has an optional dataset and reports suite to address both data collection and data upload.

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.
- Clinical Support
  - Investigations and documents
    Communicare receives pathology and imaging results, letters and other documents electronically and sends documents and letters electronically using HL7 messages.
  - Referral Management
    Manage incoming internal and external referrals from a single list.
  - Birth Notifications
    For customers who belong to the Western Australian Country Health Service, use the Birth Notifications module to manage notifications related to births from a single list.
  - Recalls
    Recalls are the elements that make up a care plan. Recalls can be either generated automatically by Communicare or manually created by the user.
  - Datasets
    Datasets are a user-friendly coding system, giving health professionals a standardised way to record data and report on data entered in a patient’s clinical record.
    - Australian Nurse-Family Partnership Program
      The Australian Nurse-Family Partnership Program (ANFPP) dataset is available to health services registered as ANFPP providers.
    - Communicare Infrastructure
      This dataset must not be disabled. It is used by Communicare internally and many parts of Communicare depend on it.
    - Communicare Value Added
      The Communicare Value Added dataset includes clinical item types not yet included in ICPC-2 PLUS, such as custom check-ups and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Checks. This data set is required for antenatal care reporting.
    - Drug and Alcohol Treatment Service
      The Drug and Alcohol Treatment Service (DATS) dataset is required for residential drug and alcohol services that need to submit data using the National Minimum Dataset. There are variations for NSW.
    - Flinders Care Plan
      The Flinders Care Plan dataset is made available to health services that are part of the Flinders Program and have undergone required training with Flinders University, S.A.
    - Home Support Programs
      Communicare supports three home support programs.
    - Headspace
      Headspace provides mental health support services to young people aged 12 to 25 years, who are experiencing, or at risk, of mental ill-health.
    - Healthy Under 5 Kids
      The Healthy Under 5 Kids dataset supports the Healthy Under 5 Kids Partnering with Families Program (2019), Northern Territory Government, Department of Health (DoH) initiative.
    - ICPC-2 PLUS
      ICPC-2 PLUS is a core dataset used by Communicare. The dataset allows health professionals to record symptoms, diagnoses, past health problems and processes (such as procedures, counselling and referrals) in a standardised way.
    - Immunisation Age Based Reviews
      The Immunisation Age Based Reviews dataset defines regular immunisation reviews based on age.
    - Immunisation Vaccines
      The Immunisation Vaccines dataset is a list of vaccines by brand name and includes the AIR Export Codes.
    - Integrated Team Care
      You can use Communicare to record Integrated Team Care (ITC) activity.
    - iSISTAQUIT
      The iSISTAQUIT dataset is made available to health services that are part of the iSISTAQUIT research program and have undergone the required training with the University of Newcastle.
    - NDIS
      Communicare has developed a simple workflow and dataset for services that provide NDIS brokerage or support coordination.
    - Primary Mental Health Care
      Many Communicare health services are required to submit data relating to primary mental health contacts to the Government via their local Primary Health Network. Communicare has an optional dataset and reports suite to address both data collection and data upload.
      - Recording PMHC
        To record PMHC encounters so that the data can be used in the PMHC MDS, use PMHC-specific clinical items.
      - Running and uploading PMHC reports
        Run the PMHC reports to generate a file containing data from the PMHC clinical items, which you can then upload to the PMHC portal.
    - RACGP Aboriginal & TSI Health Check
      The RACGP Aboriginal & TSI Health Check dataset enables the combined annual Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health check which was developed in conjunction with the RACGP and NACCHO.
    - RHD and acute rheumatic fever
      You can use Communicare to manage RHD check-ups and reviews.
    - STRIVE
      The STRIVE dataset enables you to paticipate in the randomised community trial to control sexually transmitted infections in remote Aboriginal communities in northern and central Australia.
    - Tackling Smoking
      The Tackling Smoking dataset captures data required for the South Australian Tackling Smoking Program.
    - The George Institute
      The George Institute dataset enables integration with The George Institute HealthTracker™.

Primary Mental Health Care

Many Communicare health services are required to submit data relating to primary mental health contacts to the Government via their local Primary Health Network. Communicare has an optional dataset and reports suite to address both data collection and data upload.

Tip: To use the Primary Mental Health Care, Version 4, Minimum Dataset (PMHC MDS) in Communicare:

Request the PMHC MDS and reports from Communicare Support, who will add the required data collection items and reports.
Request training. Primary mental health staff will need to be introduced to the concept of PMHC and be shown the relevant clinical items.

To collect the data required for reporting, mental health care providers need to identify the start of an episode, record all contacts relating to the episode and then record the end of the episode. For PMHC, an episode is a more or less continuous period of contact between a client and a PHN-commissioned provider organisation/clinician that starts at the point of first contact, and concludes at discharge.

In version 4.0, the concept of an intake was introduced. Intake is captured by the episode start clinical item: the user records if the episode includes the intake assessment, if the intake assessment was done elsewhere, the intake organisation must be recorded.

For more information, see PMHC-MDS Data Specification.

9 February 2024