Provider Connect Australia: Why we should all get on board

You may have heard about the Provider Connect Australia (PCA) initiative from the Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency), which has been up and running now for over a year.
 
Essentially, PCA offers a one-stop-shop to update your business information and healthcare services for people who may want to communicate with you (think hospitals, allied health professionals and other specialists) or know about your practice availability and billing policies, such as current or potential patients.
 
Once registered with PCA, you can update your practice information at any time and it will automatically be sent to your chosen contacts which can include the National Health Services Directory (NHSD). This is a key benefit to using PCA; you only need to maintain a single master copy of your practice’s details.
 
Your NHSD listing can also be automatically updated as part of this process, making it easier for your patients to have up-to-date information about your practice, including links to your website.
 
One of the most useful applications is being able to easily update details of new doctors at your practice and also those leaving. This is a particular issue at this time of year, with new doctors starting at practices around Australia. Your practice manager will only have to enter these details once in PCA and many organisations you deal with will be notified of the change automatically.
 
More than 1900 healthcare organisations have already registered with and are using PCA, including my own practice, with a growing number of ‘business partners’ coming on board. In time, these business partners will include government programs, pathology and radiology services, hospital networks, health service directories, secure messaging providers, insurers and more.
 
As PCA expands and continues to improve, it has serious potential to offer a genuinely useful and reliable service. The more healthcare organisations that get on board, the better.
 
Until recently, Healthdirect Australia (which provides and maintains the NHSD) required you to email them with changes to doctors, clinic opening hours, vaccine availability, access, type of fees (private, mixed or full bulk billing) and more.
 
However, PCA now lets you automate these updates to the NHSD in near to real time, which greatly improves the accuracy of information for practices using it.
 
Precedence Healthcare, all PHNs, Telstra Health (which owns Medical Director, Communicare, eRx and Argus among other systems) and eHealth NSW can now receive the data you enter into PCA.
 
Something to note is that the Agency is continually improving the service to make it easier to register to and use.
 
One of their more recent upgrades lets users save and publish more information to their business partners, including bank details for healthcare services and practitioner roles and FTE information for practitioners. An upcoming enhancement will allow PCA to integrate with practice management systems, meaning that our systems will then be able to send updates directly to PCA.
 
The more we use this service, the more we can collectively influence other government departments, insurers, diagnostics services, hospitals, nursing homes and the like, to seek the key information they need from this single source.
 
The efficiency and potential of PCA largely relies on as many organisations as possible getting involved, so please do consider registering your practice online, if you haven’t already and want to play a role in the success of this helpful service.
 
It’s also an easy way to keep your practice information up to date on the NHSD. Your practice manager will thank you.
 
If you’re interested in finding out more about PCA or registering, I encourage you to visit the Agency’s website or reach out to your PHN.
 
The RACGP and the Australian Association of Practice Management will be hosting a webinar on PCA in early 2024, so keep an eye out for further details in the college’s Practice Technology and Management monthly newsletter in the new year. 
 
Log in below to join the conversation.

Australian Digital Health Agency Provider Connect Australia