Referral System

 

Standards and specifications

General requirements

Cyber security

The software must demonstrate ability to effectively achieve mitigation strategies in line with ‘Essential 8’.  

Privacy

Data collected about an individual by medical software is likely to constitute health information. Due to the sensitive nature of this information, it generally has a higher degree of privacy protection than other personal information, under relevant federal, state and territory legislations.

The software must demonstrate adherence to relevant federal, state or territory privacy legislation for example, the Privacy Act 1988 (Federal) or Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW).

The applicable federal legislation is the Privacy Act 1988.

Details of the relevant state and territory legislations are contained under the State and territory requirements section below.

Core requirements

Standards for identification

The software must:  

• be able to discover and validate Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) via the Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service Business-2-Business web services
• integrate Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHIs) into the local patient record
• where the EMR stores local directory for Healthcare Providers allow for:
  • the storing of Healthcare Provider Identifier-Organisation (HPI-O) in the local system associated with the locally stored healthcare provider organisation details
  • the storing of healthcare provider identifier-individual (HPI-I) in the local system associated with the locally stored healthcare provider individuals’ details.

Australian Core Data for Interoperability (AUCDI)

The software should support the use of AUCDI Release 1.

Note: The focus of the AUCDI Release 1 is the representation of the clinical content necessary for each of the data groups identified within the Release 1 scope.

Development is continuing to enhance AUCDI.

Standards for data sharing

The software should:  

• support the authoring and consumption of clinical documents in Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) formats
• be capable of using HL7 FHIR-compliant API when receiving clinical information.

Standards for terminology, code sets and classifications  

The system must:

• accommodate the required fields to make a valid referral as defined by the Medicare Benefits Scheme.

The system should:

• support person and provider identification in healthcare National Best Practice Data Set.

National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards

The system must:

• support adherence to best practices related to Informed Consent
• support adherence to all relevant National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards in accordance with the intended scope of the system being procured. These may include, but not limited to the following standards:
  • Partnering with Consumers Standard
  • Communicating for Safety Standard
  • Comprehensive Care Standard
  • Blood Management Standard
  • Medication Safety Standard
  • Clinical Governance Standard.
• support adherence to all relevant Clinical Care Standards.

Other Standards

International

The system should:

• meet the requirements of the ISO/TS 17975:2022 Health informatics – Principle and data requirements for consent in the collection, use or disclosure of personal health information.

Connections to National Systems

My Health Record

The software should:

• be able to upload referral content to the My Heath Record System
• be able to respect patient consent at a patient and document level when contributing clinical information to the My Health Record system.

Medicare Online

The software should:

• Integrate with Medical Online Claiming system

HI Service

If the software is expected to deal with healthcare identifiers (e.g. in a hospital environment) then it must either:

• be able to discover and validate Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) via the Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service, or

Where the enterprise utilises an enterprise-wide system for discover and validation of Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) the software must:  

• be able to manage and interface with this middleware in order to enable discovery and validation of Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI).

Conformance

The software must meet the requirements for:

• the Health Identifiers Service conformance profile
• the eReferrals conformance profile
• the My Health Record conformance profile

State and territory requirements

The following state and territory requirements must be upheld based on location.