ACC looks to expand and improve Medical Notes Service

NEWS  - eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth

ACC is looking to improve and expand its Medical Notes Service, with GPs saying they are often asked to submit personal patient information via email. 

The organisation has released a Request for Information (RFI) for the delivery of the service, which processes around 96,000 GP consultation note requests each year.

The RFI document says the organisation is looking at expanding the service to cover allied health and hospital information requests, increasing the annual transaction volume to around 142,000 requests.

Lisa Williams, deputy chief executive system commissioning and performance, says ACC is exploring how a future medical notes service could build on the strengths of the existing service (currently provided by SureMed).  

“This service supports the secure requesting and receipt of information from general practices for cover, entitlement, rehabilitation and recovery decisions,” she says.

Areas of interest include improved visibility of request status, reduced administrative effort for providers and ACC, faster turnaround times, stronger reporting and support, greater integration with ACC systems, and broader digital capabilities that may support other health provider information requests over time.

GP and clinical director at ProCare PHO Allan Moffitt says ACC adds significantly to the administration and compliance burden for general practice, which he links to their coding systems.

He believes the key issue is the lack of use of the secure system to communicate with over patient details. 

“We now get case managers emailing directly and asking for reports to be sent back by email, instead of via SureMed or a secure system,” says Moffitt. 

“It is much easier to select the relevant consultations and edit out detail that ACC does not need to know about when using SureMed, or similar.”

Louise Poynton, GP and clinical spokesperson for General Practice New Zealand agrees that requests sometimes come via email which means it is not as easy to track what has been sent and when, and it is less clear as a health provider where that information has gone. 

“There a risk that it might be still sitting in an inbox, or a higher risk of being accidentally forwarded to the wrong person, so from a GP perspective, a fit-for-purpose secure system that meets modern privacy and cyber security standards is highly preferable,” she tells eHealthNews.

“This is really sensitive health information and we need to look after it.”

Poynton says GPs only want to provide the information that is directly relevant to the claim, which can involve a lot of time reviewing and editing notes

“Using email is a very clunky process in terms of taking the information, putting it into a document within the practice management system, then deleting information out,” she explains.

Williams says  Practice Management Systems Medtech, Indici, and MyPractice  integrate with SureMedIf and if a provider does not use one of these, they can provide their medical notes to ACC by uploading them through a secure web-based portal.

Responses are due by 27 October 2026, after which ACC will decide whether to go to market to procure a solution.

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