Canterbury GPs live with new patient portal and digital reception

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Canterbury’s Better Health Group has gone live with new patient portal and ‘digital reception’ functionality, using the Centrik platform.

Five of the group’s general practices went live with the white label Better Health Outcomes app in March and the technology will ultimately be rolled out to more than 70,000 enrolled patients.

The group has had nearly 20 percent uptake so far, with 10,400 patients invited to register and around 2000 registered.

Better Health Group (BHG) worked with Christchurch company, Webtools, to deploy the BHO app using their new Centrik platform. The platform offers a patient portal, appointment booking, check in functionality, repeat prescriptions, patient messaging and notifications, as well as payments, in a single application.

With GP consent, patients can access a summary of their health record, which utilises the HL7 FHIR International Patient Summary (IPS) standard of medical data records.

An event driven integration with Medtech’s ALEX (Application Layer EXchange) platform means only the data that is required and consented for is accessed from the patient management system by Centrik in real-time.

BHG director David Jones says the introduction of the app is about using technology to engage patients in their journey and move from care being done to them, to patients being fully involved.

Fellow director Graham McGeoch says in the future the platform will enable re-enrolments and more “automatic and systematic care, with lots of tasks and reminders to patients”.

Also, future care planning and allowing patients to share their medical records with people involved in their care, if they choose.

Kanwal Shah, practice manager at Moore Street Medical Centre in Ashburton, says the practice is running the BHO app in parallel with its traditional patient portal as it transitions services to the Centrik product.

“The software is easy to use for us and the patients,” she says.

“During development we had regular patient input, which drove certain aspects of the interface. This includes big clear buttons, which helps it to not look crowded and also means patients can achieve what they need within a couple of clicks. It has made booking appointments and repeat prescriptions much easier.”

More than 400 of the practice’s patients have signed up to use the BHO app since it went live two months ago and the practice does not need to approve each enrolment application as the app verifies the patient’s identity, reducing the workload for the practice.

She says the ability for patients to ‘arrive themselves’ at the surgery also reduces pressure on administrative staff.

The practice ultimately aims to have around half of patients using the digital service and plans to adopt the online payment module when it is available.

“Our initial aim was quite a lot lower as our patient age group is older and we imagined a lot of these patients wouldn’t want to use the app, but we have clearly been proven wrong because a lot of older patients want it and find it easy to use,” says Shah.

One patient told her she was able to show her medication list on the app to a paramedic when she was having trouble breathing.

Webtools chief executive, Harry Hawke says one of the next enhancements to the Centrik system is the use of push notifications via the app, saving money for practices on text messaging and allowing direct links to booking and repeat prescription functionality online.

Picture: Kanwal Shah, practice manager at Moore Street Medical Centre in Ashburton

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