Whether server-bound software is best practice or not, thousands of Aussie GPs will need to manually upgrade their PMS soon.
Best Practice customers will need to upgrade their software by 30 September to ensure access to electronic prescribing through the new national prescription delivery service.
Best Practice, along with Medical Director, dominate market share in Australia’s primary care software sector. Although it recently hinted at moving to a cloud version the application is currently server-bound. Practice managers across Australia will therefore need to manually upgrade the software in each of their clinics.
The upgrade is packaged as Bp Premier Orchid SP1 and, alongside a raft of other new functions, conforms with the new national prescription delivery service that rolled out last month.
The new national PDS is backed by a federal government budget of $111.8 million over four years. The spend also permanently covers the cost of sending eScripts through SMS. Nearly 315 million eScripts were dispensed under the PBS in 2020-21 after a national system of electronic prescriptions was launched in May 2020.
The new PDS is built on FredIT’s eRx Script Exchange which won the government contract in May. General practices which use Best Practice will need to both upgrade and register all prescribers with eRx by 30 September to continue to prescribe eligible medications.
The Best Practice upgrade also enables clinicians to access patient data in My Script List (MySL). MySL is an opt-in service which lists all of a patient’s active prescriptions regardless of who prescribed them. MySL is a separate application to My Health Record.
Pharmacists can enrol patients for an active script list in MySL. Patients must also provide consent to their clinicians to allow the doctor to access patient data.
MySL gives pharmacists a complete view of a patient’s current active prescriptions and removes the need for ePrescription tokens. The service targets patients with complex health conditions who may benefit from assistance managing multiple electronic prescriptions.
Alongside the expanded eScript functionality, Bp Orchid SP1 includes the normal bug fixes, the ability to link advance care planning documents to My Health Record and new prompts for HealthLink SmartForms. It also aims to streamline electronic ordering of radiology and pathology and adds a couple of extra safeguards for billing and claiming.
