Expressions of Interest: testing Provider Connect Australia services in Vaccine Clinic Finder Connect practices

⁠⁠⁠North Western Melbourne Primary Health Network (NWMPHN) invites general practices to test the efficacy of Provider Connect Australia, a new health care information service developed by the Australian Digital Health Agency.

What is Provider Connect Australia?

Provider Connect Australia (PCA) is operated by the Australian Digital Health Agency. It provides comprehensive and automatic updates across service networks every time a health care provider notifies it of changed services, personnel or operating parameters.

What are the benefits for general practice?

When a general practice updates operational or staffing details in the PCA service, it automatically sends the new information to nominated hospitals, pathology and radiology services, public service directories, secure messaging providers and more.

Previously, this process might necessitate completing between 10 and 20 different paper or online forms to make sure each part of the practice’s ecosystem was alerted – and tiresomely repeated each time information changed.

PCA thus removes a substantial red-tape burden, and reduces inaccurate and out-of-date information across the sector, improving efficiency and quality of care.

What does participation involve?

This is the second stage of the ADHA’s national pilot, and seeks to test the efficiency of the service in general practices already registered for another ADHA service, Vaccine Clinic Finder Connect (VCF Connect).

Participating practices will be asked to:

register on the Provider Connect Australia portal, following the steps in this video
set-up the organisation’s health care service details
participate in a surveys, interviews and focus group discussions
Your feedback will assist in the evaluation of PCA, providing insight into its current strengths and weaknesses and informing further refinements.

NWMPHN will support participating practices with the process of registration by way of registration appointment, provide access to educational resources and step by step guides and videos. Currently the ADHA are offering to attend group registration appointments.

NWMPHN will also provide ad hoc support to resolve any questions arising.