Totalcare + Electronic Prescriptions

Equipoise International is proud to announce that Totalcare has successfully completed all the requirements and testing to support Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP).

Following several months of comprehensive formal testing with eRx and the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), Totalcare 8.1 has been recognized as meeting the stringent requirements set out in the ADHA 3.0.1 conformance profile for electronic prescribing.

Totalcare is one of only a handful of Clinical systems that have successfully completed the rigorous 3.0.1 conformance requirements stipulated by the Australian Government for electronic prescribing.

Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions with Totalcare is included in Totalcare 8.1 and builds on the support for healthcare identifiers released in Totalcare 7, and the My Health Record in Totalcare 8. Totalcare 8.1 is available for use now.

What are some of the features of Totalcare’s Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions?

Underpinning the support for Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions has been a rewrite of all the prescription and medication screens in Totalcare Clinicals Mozart to support new prescribing capability.

• Paperless prescriptions can be sent via SMS or Email to patients or their nominated carer.
• Paperless prescriptions can be emailed or faxed to a pharmacy where applicable.
• Medications included on a paperless prescription can be automatically added to a patient’s Active Script List Registry.
• New capability to electronically cancel a prescription that hasn’t been dispensed, or cease any further repeats for a prescription that has been dispensed.
• New capability to reissue an electronic prescription to a different SMS or Email contact, or resend it to an earlier contact.
• New capability to identify a prescription as a “Script owing” or having an “Unusual dose”.
• New capability on paperless prescriptions to include pharmacy instructions in free text, or with indicators such as “Retain repeats”, “Stage supply” or “Send to Dosing point”.
• New capability to optionally record a reason for prescribing either as free text or as a SNOMED-CT coded reason.
• New capability to specify where applicable an alternative route of administration for a drug.
• New audit actions for prescriptions record when a prescription was created, uploaded to the My Health Record and/or eRx, sent to a patient, printed, amended, cancelled or ceased.
• Support for State based Approval/Authority/Warrant numbers (collectively ARN – Approval Reference Number) when prescribing restricted substances in different Australian states.
• Automatic inclusion of jurisdiction-appropriate annotations for prescriptions such as “for optometry use only”, “for dental use only” etc. based on the type of prescriber and the Australian State or Territory in which the prescription is written.
• A new Prescriptions view has been added to the Clinical Workbench. The new view displays all prescriptions written for any patient and includes status icons displaying whether a prescription has been successfully sent electronically or whether there are warnings associated with it.
• Transition support to enable progressive use of electronic prescribing capability in environments that include prescribers who are not registered with eRx, the Healthcare Identifier Service, or without multi-factor authentication support.

What are some of the features of the security enhancements in Totalcare 8.1?

A key component of satisfying the 3.0.1 conformance requirements for electronic prescribing is enhanced security functionality to better protect Totalcare clinical systems from unauthorized access.

• Support for two factor authentication (2FA) using one time passwords and apps such as Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Duo, etc.
• Support for password policies including password reuse, password expiry, password complexity and minimum length.
• Support for defining an inactivity timeout in Mozart before reauthentication is required.
• Enhanced support for storing passwords using Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) approved algorithms.
• Transitional support for the new security enhancements including user profile based requirements for 2FA, login grace periods and password policies.

What is meant by Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions?

Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions or ETP is the transfer of a digital version of a paper prescription to a recipient (usually the patient) through an electronic channel such as SMS or email.  It replaces the requirement for a paper prescription.

A paperless prescription is technically referred to as a Prescription ‘token’. The token is deemed to be the ‘Evidence of Prescription’ (EoP). The recipient of a paperless prescription presents the Prescription token to a pharmacy, who then use the barcode included on the EoP to retrieve the prescription from the NPDS or National Prescription Delivery Service.

Paperless prescriptions are also referred to as ETP2 prescriptions. An ETP1 prescription is a prescription that is electronically uploaded to eRx, supplementing a paper prescription provided to a patient that includes eRx barcodes. A paper prescription is a prescription printed on preprinted prescription stationery that is not uploaded to eRx or sent electronically to a patient.

Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions Resources

The Australian Digital Health Agency provides online training, webinars and resources for healthcare providers to learn more about electronic prescribing.

• Find out more about Electronic prescribing for prescribers
• Join a webinar to learn more about electronic prescribing
• Free online training modules to learn more about electronic prescribing