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Provider Connect Australia – release history

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 PCATM entity on the relevant details screen of the PCATM 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