The ACS includes the history taken, a summary of the patient’s clinical problem, any treatment administered, and recommendations provided to the patient. It has been designed specifically for general practices, with feedback incorporated from the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners.
The ACS is sent via Healthlink using the HL7 protocol, ensuring security and privacy. The basis for the message structure is the REF^I12 message type within the HL7 2.4 message standard described here.
The patients’ practices are found by using NHI Number to look up the National Enrolment System. The HealthLink directory is then used to find the practice’s HealthLink EDI address.
Your practice will receive the summaries into your PMS system’s default Service Provider Inbox, and the summaries will have an NHI number to allow easy filing. We can only send them to the practice and not directly to the patient’s GP because that information is not available from the Ministry of Health’s National Enrolment System.
You can choose to read the summaries as they come in, look at them the next time you see that patient, or have a member of the general practice team (e.g. practice nurse) review them.
You may access a more detailed ACS by clicking here. You will be asked to enter the ACS Access Code (from the HealthLink message) and patient’s date of birth.
You can access the full record this way for up to one week; after that please contact the St John Referrals Coordinator at info@stjohn.org.nz or by phoning 0800 ST JOHN (0800 473 876) and asking to speak to the Referrals Coordinator.