Sirius PMS live at two Christchurch practices

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Picture: The patient summary screen in Sirius.

eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Two Christchurch general practices have gone live with the Sirius patient management system developed for Canterbury by Pegasus Health.

The PMS, provided by Intrahealth and localised by primary health organisation Pegasus, went live in one Christchurch practice on 14 June and another on 3 September.

The new system has a patient portal called Sirius Care, a clinician portal for use out of the office called Sirius Lite and a provider portal called Sirius Extended Care Team, which allows approved external providers, such as pharmacists, access to parts of a patient’s medical record.

Pegasus clinical leader information technology Martin Wilson says there are also apps in development that will form part of the Sirius product suite.

Wilson says large numbers of GPs have attended presentations on Sirius over the past month and the product has been well received.

“Changing PMS doesn’t happen very often and some GPs are not far from retirement so they may not be keen on making changes, but I have been surprised at the reaction as they obviously are,” he says.

Wilson believes this is because the development of Sirius has been driven by a clinical reference group.

“We have built several iterations of the product, enhancing each build guided by a team of clinicians and practice managers, and including feedback from our end users,” says Wilson.

This includes the creation of a Patient Overview Screen, which gives clinicians an instant summary of a patient’s health record.

The patient portal offers patients telephone consults and direct messaging with their GP, as well as access to whatever information they and their GP have agreed to share.

Pegasus has also developed its own implementation process.

“The implementation period includes an assessment of the practice’s readiness for change, configuration of the product for each practice, data migration testing, staff training and support for the go-live period,” Wilson says.

He adds that a highlight of the go-live programme has been the success of the data migrations in each of the practices.

The practice owner and GP from the most recent practice to go live says staff had some reservations about changing the PMS.

“We have found that Sirius is an intuitive program which has been easy to learn how to use. We are feeling quite confident and can already see the benefits this software has to offer,” she says.

“We are really looking forward to opening up the patient portal and vastly improving the connection our patients are able to have with primary care.”

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