ACT Implementation Project

NEHTA is collaborating with the ACT Health on an ‘early adopter’ Medicare Australia HI Service integration project. The aim of the project is to improve the identity management of patients across institutional boundaries, helping to ensure patient information is accurate and can be shared electronically. Specifically this includes:

  • Engage with software vendors to develop Web Service interfaces to enable the ACT Health Patient Master Index (PMI) to interact with the HI Service
  • Engage with software vendors to modify ACT Health’s PMI data structure as required to cater for the storage of data and transactions related to the HI Service
  • Develop the processes, tools and methodologies to enable the validation of ACT Health PMI patient data, using data obtained from the HI Service and to ensure the HI service meets ACT Health functional, operational and performance requirements
  • Participate in a data profiling and validation exercise to assist ACT Health with the batch retrieval of IHI numbers for PMI patient records and the production of best practice guidelines and recommendations for implementing HI Services into other health jurisdictions
  • Perform a validation testing exercise of the HI Service, including the matching and non-matching data processes and validation of error messages

Progress

August 2010

  • ACT Health successfully applied to Medicare Australia for registration with the HI Service to receive its Healthcare Provider Identifier Organisation (HPI-O) number
  • ACT Health registered with Medicare Australia its Responsible Officer (RO) and Organisational Maintenance Officer (OMO) for the HPI-O
  • ACT Health applied for and received a Medicare Australia issued PKI location certificate, with its new HPI-O number embedded in the certificate

September 2010

  • ACT Health in collaboration with NEHTA developed a software application to produce files that create asynchronous (off-line) search files, to be submitted to the HI Service to retrieve IHI numbers
  • Medicare Australia issues its first ‘Notice of Integration’ (NOI) to ACT Health after the application passed conformance testing with Medicare Australia’s Online Technical Support (OTS) group

October 2010

  • The vendor selected by NEHTA to perform the data validation and profiling components of the project commenced testing with Medicare Austalia's OTS group to test their HI Service integration tool
  • ACT Health are running a data profiling and validation exercise with Medicare Australia on the asynchronous IHI Batch Search service

November 2010

  • The selected vendor completed system interface testing with Medicare Australia, received their NOI and have commenced validation testing
  • ACT Health are continuing with their validation exercise with Medicare Australia and are successfully sending and receiving data using the asynchronous IHI Batch Search Service

December 2010

  • Initial findings of the validation and data profiling activity of ACT Health patient records matching to HI Service were presented by the vendor
  • A detailed project plan has been developed for the HI Implementation Project and an Initial Requirements Workshop was conducted between ACT Health and NEHTA staff