Published July 13th 2021

The use of My Aged Care e-Referral forms is continuing to increase across Australia with more than 2,000 general practices now using them to refer patients.

In total, over 20,000 My Aged Care e-Referral forms have been submitted since the national service launched in September 2019. More than 90 new practices are signing up each month to use the solution.

My Aged Care is the entry point for older Australians to access government-funded aged care. My Aged Care e-Referral forms use HealthLink technology developed by health IT solutions company, Clanwilliam Health.

My Aged Care e-Referral forms are integrated into practice management systems, allowing patient information to be pre-populated, which saves time and reduces the risk of data input errors.

This integration means the forms take only a few minutes to complete and are processed instantly once submitted to My Aged Care. This is the fastest, easiest, and most secure way to refer patients to My Aged Care.

Clanwilliam Health’s My Aged Care account manager Jean-Christophe Meunier says feedback from GPs and the My Aged Care online service team has been overwhelmingly positive.

“GPs have commended being able to pre-populate data from the patient’s record. This makes the referral process much faster, especially when compared to sending referrals by fax or via the My Aged Care website.”

He says the My Aged Care team can process e-Referrals quickly and efficiently at their end.

“e-Referrals remove additional manual processing of patient referrals meaning a large reduction in waiting time for patients to be referred for an assessment,” Mr Meunier says.

 

Glowing feedback from users

Chandlers Hill Surgery in South Australia was part of the 2019 pilot programme trialling My Aged Care e-Referral forms and has continued using them ever since.

Nurse manager Casey Franchi says she would recommend the forms to any general practice.

“Life is so much easier now… the time saved means I can focus on the important stuff like caring for patients and not filling out forms.”

Dr William Poh from Malvern Road Medical Centre in New South Wales says the forms mean it’s “quick and easy to complete a complex referral”.

Practice manager Kay Stragalinos works at Station Square Medical Centre in Victoria and says My Aged Care e-Referral forms reduce a lot of doubling up.

“It makes referrals to My Aged Care so seamless, being integrated into our medical software. We love how it auto-populates patient information and that we can attach relevant documents.”

My Aged Care e-Referral forms are easily accessed from the four main practice management systems used in Australia – Best Practice, Medical Director, Genie and Medtech.