Electronic Referrals Draft Release 1.0

19 February 2010. NEHTA is pleased to announce the publication of the Electronic Referrals Draft Release 1.0, incorporating a Business Requirements Specification, Solution Design and Core Information Components document.  Together, they describe national requirements for the consistent creation, delivery and receipt of electronic patient referrals between Australia’s general practitioners and specialists.

The Electronic Referral Release Package incorporates extensive stakeholder consultation and up-to-date information and expertise from leading clinical, administrative and analytical communities.

It is the first step in providing technology partners with specifications and methods that can be tested, while delivering a critical building block for the emerging e-health infrastructure currently taking shape across Australia.

A Structured Document Template and CDA Exchange specification to support this package is scheduled for public release in July 2010. These specifications will provide the industry with further guidance in the development of a nationally consistent messaging solution.

Benefits
A consistent national Referral system offers major benefits for patients and the healthcare industry including:

  • accuracy of clinical information via secure and structured communications between referrers (general practitioners) and referees (specialists), promoting safety, error reduction and reduced duplication of clinical and administrative effort;
  • cost-efficiencies via increasing interoperability of practices and systems, with a corresponding decrease in miscommunication and associated risks; and
  • coordination of services and treatments, from diagnosis to interventions, leading to increasingly-integrated care potentials, nationwide.

Content
The release package comprises three important documents outlining the specifications and methods needed to support structured exchange of patient referral information between disparate healthcare information systems. You can access the package from:

www.nehta.gov.au/e-communications-in-practice/ereferrals

Feedback
This package now enters a national review period which will extend to the 30th April 2010 followed by finalisation and public release in June 2010.

Please email comments or queries in relation to the draft release to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by 30th April 2010.