Wairarapa Community PHO EOI - New Zealand Doctor

4.8.2 E-Referrals
Compass Health has implemented e-referrals from GPTs to PHO services. This system has been in
place for over 18 months in several services including Community Cardiology, Community
Respiratory, Community Cancer and SIA Nursing. Wairarapa DHB and Compass Health are currently
both championing projects to get e-referrals from GPs to secondary care. Where hospital systems
are not presently capable of receiving such referrals, the WCPHO/CH is ready to technically facilitate
and act as a clearinghouse for such activity.
Full e-referrals from GPs to secondary care will have several benefits for the patient journey, from
increased efficiency of delivery of referrals, to better, more convenient information, including more
advanced digital diagnostics performed in primary care. Providers will see benefits in better
integrated decision support, enabling them to decrease rates of inappropriate or incomplete
referrals, gaining a better ability to track a patient’s journey through secondary care systems and
enabling them to continue to act as the patient’s primary carer. Hospitals will realise benefits, with
having fewer inappropriate referrals, more complete and accurate referral information, and less
chance of having missing or lost referrals.
After the establishment of GPT to secondary service e-referrals, WCPHO/CH will seek to establish e-
referrals between GPTs. Such a model will enable better use of the existing primary care workforce.
Those practitioners with a special interest or advanced skills in some areas will be able to readily and
easily accept cases from their colleagues (which may form the basis of virtualised integrated family
health services). They will then be able to provide more detailed information for a patient’s referral
into secondary care, or in mild and less-complex cases provide extra support to maintain a patient’s
health in primary care alone.
Deploying more advanced diagnostic equipment into primary care for appropriately trained and
skilled clinicians to use, coupled with the ability of e-referrals to contain high-resolution digitised
diagnostic media (images, sounds etc), will see an improved ability of secondary outpatient services
to triage patients. This will be particularly effective in areas such as dermatology and ophthalmology
where there are traditionally longer waits for outpatient services, but where such imaging is an
important tool in diagnosis and treatment.
Putting in place these e-referral strategies is a core strategic goal of the WCPHO/CH’s Information
Management department over the next two years 40 , and aligns with the Health Information Strategy
for New Zealand action zone 41 .
4.8.3 Regional Whole-Of-Sector Health Information Analysis Unit
WCPHO/CH wishes to work with key-strategic partners to form a sector-wide health information
analysis unit. This unit would initially consist of technical information analysts from the primary care,
hospital, funding and planning and research sectors. The unit’s aim would be to demolish the
barriers created by having siloed data across the primary care, secondary care and funding arms of
the sector. The unit will either be co-located or work-together on a regular basis, and promote
understanding and establishment of more trusting and symbiotic relationships.
40 Compass Health. 2009. Compass Health Information Management Strategic Plan : 2009 - 2012
41 Health Information Strategic Steering Committee. 2005. Health Information Strategy for New Zealand.
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