Latest News
Over the course of this year’s reporting period various issues have been raised regarding the Launch Bar. Please see the information below to decide your Health Service’s course of action. Feel free to... - Wednesday, 20 June 2018 Communicare version 18.1 now available
- Wednesday, 13 June 2018 Launchbar V1.3 Mid Year Reporting
- Tuesday, 10 April 2018 Expanding the Communicare Team
- Tuesday, 10 April 2018 What is ICPC-2 PLUS?
Over the course of this year’s reporting period various issues have been raised regarding the Launch Bar.
Please see the information below to decide your Health Service’s course of action.
Feel free to contact the Service Desk if you have any questions or require assistance.
Launch Bar Updates (OCHREStream and DoH Portal direct upload):
Issue (1):
Contact types of “other”, “hospital”, “court”, and “telephone” were erroneously excluded in KPI calculations, resulting in under reporting of the number of patient contacts by a margin proportional to a site’s use of these contact types.
Solution (1):
Launch Bar to include “other”, “hospital”, “court”, and “telephone” contacts when determining regular clients. No client-side patches are required and affected clients will need to re-run reports and re-submit.
Issue (2):
Patients with three visits in the previous two years who died before the end of the reporting period were erroneously included in the KPI calculations, resulting in over reporting of the number of regular clients by a margin proportional to clients who died in the last two years.
Solution (2):
Launch Bar to exclude patients who died during the reporting period in regular client calculations. No client-side patches are required and affected clients will need to re-run reports and re-submit.
Communicare Stored Procedures Updates:
Issue (3):
Calculations relating to PI24 may cause Launch Bar timeouts preventing successful submissions.
Solution (3):
Stored procedure performance improvements will prevent PI24 related timeouts (there will be no change to PI24 specific results). This solution will require a client-side server stored procedure update. Please contact the Communicare Service Desk to have the updated stored procedures installed. Affected clients will need to re-run reports and re-submit.
Issue (4):
Calculations relating to PI07 and PI08 may cause Launch Bar timeouts preventing successful submissions.
Solution (4):
Stored procedure performance improvements will prevent PI07 and PI08 related timeouts. If patients have NO 721/723 Medicare claim but DO have a completed GPMP or TCA clinical item, there may be a slight increase to the PI07 and PI08 numerators. This solution will require a client-side server stored procedure update. Please contact the Communicare Service Desk to have the updated stored procedures installed. Affected clients will need to re-run reports and re-submit.
We are pleased to announce that version 18.1 of Communicare is now publicly available after having been successfully released to several sites as a limited release. Information about the new version 18.1 features is provided below and are also demonstrated in our new Communicare Version 18.1 Feature Demonstration.
Development of version 18.2 is already complete and is now available as a limited release. Information about v18.2 features is also provided below.
Taking into account the features of each version customers are welcome to either take v18.1 or wait for v18.2 to become publicly available. If you would like to discuss please contact the Communicare Service Desk on 1800 798 441.
For more information please refer to the link below.
Version 18.1 Features or view the Upgrading to Communicare Version 18.1 features demonstration.
New Team Members
Frances (Fran) Lodge joins the Communicare Help Desk this July. Fran has an extensive IT background, with close to 20 years experience across a number of fields and has exceptional customer service and client liaison skills. Welcome Fran!
New Customer – Awabakal Medical Services
Telstra Health successfully completed the Awabakal Medical Services (AMS) Communicare implementation, which comprised data migration from Medical Director and professional services leading to a late December 2017 Go Live. The Telstra Health team comprised of Perth staff (Alistair Nicolson, Kresna Bell and Tim Parkinson mainly) and Brisbane staff (including Jane Enchelmaier, Monique Paddock, Jono Steedman and Chris Noble).
Awabakal celebrated its 40th year history of service delivery in 2017. From very humble beginnings it has transformed into one of the largest Aboriginal community owned and run organisations in New South Wales and became a leading example of Aboriginal development in Australia. They have well established programs in health, dental, aged care, early learning and housing.
Awabakal Medical Service has expanded to 26 permanent staff, 7 part time staff, 5 casual staff, 16 visiting specialists, 15 visiting allied health workers, 6 dental workers which is a total of 75 health professionals.
Awabakal’s service delivery area takes in Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Maitland and Port Stephens. Their main clinic is at Hamilton in Newcastle. Awabakal deliver outreach clinics to Toronto, Maitland, Karuah, Windale and Wickham. They are currently setting up 2 new clinic sites at Cardiff and Raymond Terrace.
AMS is now using 65 Communicare licenses to service 21,914 patients across 8 sites in NSW:
Our Telstra Health team found they are a “lovely health service to work with”. A couple of the GPs are previous users of Communicare (Dr Kate from Ngukurr Sunrise and Dr Jim from DDAMS).
Below is a photo of the Wickham clinic. The building is older than 100 years. It used to be a school and is now utilised by Awabakal Corporate Services, Housing Services and Aged Care. It is also utilised to run Men’s and Women’s groups, the Mum’s and Bubs programs and staff training.
New Customer – Durri Aboriginal Corporation Medical Service
Telstra Health successfully completed the Durri Aboriginal Corporation Medical Service (Durri ACMS) Communicare go live on 22 January 2018, which comprised data migration from Medical Director and professional services. The Telstra Health team comprised of Perth staff (Alistair Nicolson, Kresna Bell, PJ Connolly, Aaron Grillo, Steve Dixon & Tim Parkinson mainly) and Brisbane staff (Monique Paddock, Jane Enchelmaier, Jono Steedman and Chris Noble mainly).
Durri ACMS is situated at Kempsey NSW (425 km from Sydney) and is one of the largest AMS in the state. Durri means "to grow in good health" and is the traditional land of the Dunghutti and Gumbaynggirr people. 
Durri ACMS is now using Communicare to service ~4,500 patients (with ~15,000 patients on their records) across NSW. In addition to the medical clinic, Durri ACMS offers an extensive range of health care services: Care Coordination, Care Planning, Child and Family Health program, Dental Clinic, Diabetes Care, Drug, Alcohol & Addictions Service, Eye Health, Family Support Worker, Hearing Health, Immunisation, Maternal and Neonatal Care, Mental Health Services, Physiotherapy, Podiatrist, Safety & Wellbeing Team, Medical Specialist Clinics: Endocrinologist, Renal Physician, Respiratory Physician, Paediatricians, Adult Psychiatrist, Child Psychiatrist, Geriatrician, Transport Service, Women's Health Clinic.
Our Telstra Health team have fed back that “ …the staff here at the health service are a great bunch of people to work with and it has been fantastic to work with them to transition to Communicare”.
Congratulations to the Telstra Health team members who worked incredibly hard to get this project completed.
Page 1 of 2