Provider Connect Australia – release history

Release 24.2, 22 October 2024

Enhancements and improvements

Practitioner self-service functionality

  • Allow practitioners to log into PCA™ via PRODA and:
    • view the healthcare services that they are linked to
    • manage their own publications to business partners
    • upload and publish certificates of insurance, qualifications and other documents
    • add their personal contact information, i.e., email address and phone number
    • authorise other PCA™ users to manage details on their behalf.

Key contacts

  • Allow healthcare provider organisations to save and publish information about their key contacts:
    • Key contacts could be the practice manager at a specific location, the person you contact from billing enquiries or the person responsible for ICT – as examples.

Updated "Home" and "My Organisations" portal pages

  • Refreshed design and content on the "Home" and "My Organisations" portal pages to improve the user experience based on feedback from usability testing.

PCA portal feedback

  • Ability for PCA™ users to provide feedback directly from the PCA™ portal.

Release 24.1, 28 May 2024

Enhancements and improvements

  • New integration option for clinical systems that allows vendors with capability to expose a FHIR interface to develop a standard integration with PCA™.
  • Business partners will have the ability to create tasks for PCA™ users that can:
    • prompt them to complete missing information
    • prompt them to update suspected incorrect information; or
    • include links to take them to business partner self-service portals.
  • Addition of the following new data fields in PCA™:
    • Initial Assessment and Referral (IAR) ratings field.
      • IAR is a decision-making framework guided by clinicians' own assessment and clinical judgement. The tool is used to support GPs to match a person’s presenting mental health needs with the right level of service intensity as early as possible in their health journey.
    • "Taking new patients" status to allow healthcare services to record if they accept new patients or existing patients only.
    • "Healthcare service description” field to allow healthcare provider organisations to record information about their service that is not included elsewhere.

Release 2.4.3, 20 February 2024

Enhancements and improvements

Healthcare providers:

  • Display the date a change was last made by a user to a PCA™ entity on the relevant details screen of the PCA™ portal.
  • Update and consolidate the list of healthcare service "billing options" to align with the National Health Services Directory (NHSD).
  • Update "Importing services from the NHSD" function to support updated billing options.
  • Added a checkbox for providers to declare that they can provide urgent care services when creating an "Urgent Care Clinic".

Business partners:

  • The list of healthcare service "billing options" will be consolidated and updated to align with the National Health Services Directory (NHSD).

The following billing options will be consolidated to the existing “No fee” option:

  • No fee (means tested)
  • By Donation.

The following billing options will be consolidated into the new “Mixed billing” option:

  • Co-payment
  • Fees and bulk billing
  • Other.

Release 2.4.2, 13 December 2023

Patch release

  • Simplify COVID-19 vaccination services in PCA™ by combining multiple services for each different COVID-19 vaccination brand into a single service in alignment with the NHSD.
  • Updated text on PCA™ Portal home page.

Release 2.4.1, 7 November 2023

Patch release

  • Increase maximum limit of records on the data export file to support larger business partners using this feature.
  • Addition of a Publishing Systems Synchroniser role to align with requirements detailed in the PCA Conformance Profile.
  • Removal of the Booking Provider field to align with the National Health Services Directory (NHSD).
  • Correction to wording on the PCA portal login page.
  • Fix cosmetic UI bugs and notification messaging identified after the version 2.4 release on 17 October 2023.
  • Increase the database query timeout limit to accommodate larger/more complex API requests.

Release 2.4, 17 October 2023

Enhancements and improvements

  • Allow practitioners who are not currently registered with Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (Ahpra) to be linked to a healthcare service.
  • Leverage information stored in the Australian Business Register (ABR) to determine if a signatory has authority to sign a participation agreement.
    • This will remove the need to provide evidence of authority documentation and will streamline the registration and signing process.
  • Decrease the need for data re-entry by importing the existing information stored in the National Health Services Directory (NHSD).
  • Deliver new functionality that will support the change of ownership (e.g. business sales, mergers or demergers) of sub-organisations, Healthcare Identifier Organisations (HI Organisations) or locations in PCA. The update will also allow PCA to handle updates to organisation information automatically from the Australian Business Register and Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service).
  • Allow healthcare provider organisations to save and publish additional information to business partners, including:
    • Bank details for healthcare services and practitioner roles
    • FTE information for practitioner roles.

Release 2.3, 9 May 2023

Enhancements and improvements

  • A new setup wizard to guide healthcare provider organisations through setting up and sharing information.
  • Improved signing workflow for participation agreements:
    • the legal entity type of the registering organisation will be automatically populated from the Australian Business Register, removing the need for registering organisations to collect this information beforehand
    • participation agreements can be signed electronically
    • a second signatory isn’t needed on applicable participation agreements.
  • Ability for healthcare provider organisations to use PCA to update their organisation details in the HI Service.

Release 2.2, 16 February 2023

Enhancements and improvements

  • Migration of Vaccine Clinic Finder Connect (VCFC) clinics to PCA.
    • Allow healthcare provider organisations to migrate their vaccine clinics from VCFC to PCA.
    • Allow healthcare provider organisations to update their vaccine clinics from PCA.
  • Online forms integration for business partners.
    • Allow integrated business partners to use PCA to pre-fill online forms.
    • Allow integrated business partners to provide access to their online forms from the PCA portal.
  • Enhancements to PCA registration process for healthcare provider organisations.
    • Improve workflow involved with signing participation agreements and uploading documents to streamline registration process.
  • Streamline the process for healthcare provider organisations to publish their details to the National Health Services Directory (NHSD).
    • Healthcare provider organisations can immediately publish to the NHSD when creating healthcare services in PCA – unless they choose not to.
  • Public holiday support.
    • Allow healthcare provider organisations to set special public holiday opening hours in PCA.
  • Data export to allow bulk processing of information received by non-integrated business partners.
    • Allow business partners to export information published to them as a delimited text file.
  • Improve usability of the PCA portal.
    • Update the user interface of the PCA portal to improve usability.

Release 2.1, 9 December 2022

Enhancements and improvements

  • Enhanced practitioner search function. 
    • Allow healthcare provider organisations to search for practitioners by name, profession, or Ahpra number.
  • Improved accessibility of PCA portal.
    • Update user interface including menus, buttons, and links to improve accessibility.
  • Email alert for PCA notifications.
    • Enable an email notification when a new notification or task is available in the PCA portal.  
  • Improvements for non-integrated business partners.
    • Allow business partners to select the types of data changes that will email notification. 
    • Allow business partners to enable the display of FHIR® IDs in email notifications.
    • Creation of additional email frequency options for business partners.
Trade marks of the Australian Digital Health Agency:
Provider Connect Australia™, Helping healthcare providers stay connected™
Date last updated: 15 November 2024