Following government approval, we're now able to administer the Moderna Bivalent COVID vaccine to our eligible patients! However (like most things) there are a couple of caveats:

• Given the current stage of the rollout, these vaccines are intended for patients 18 and over as a THIRD booster dose, or for patients 30 years and over as a FOURTH booster dose.
• Vaccines can be administered THREE (3) months after either the last administered dose or booster dose, or THREE (3) months post-COVID infection.
• Patients may receive a FIFTH dose if they met eligibility criteria, such as severe immunocompromise in patients aged 16 and older, although this advice MAY CHANGE.

As TGA and ATAGI have not broadly approved a fifth dose for patients aged 18 and above, please do NOT book patients in to receive a 5th dose unless they meet that criteria, otherwise they will be turned away from our clinics (currently running on Friday afternoons). Should you wish to administer a 5th dose to your patients, you would need to do so yourself, but bear in mind that admnistering against the 'current rules' may affect our ability to deliver vaccinations more generally in future!

Our clinics are due to wind up next week (17th Nov), unless demand increases or the rules change (the later more likely than the former)!

...Shared Health Summaries and you...

As part of our PIP requirements, CSMP is required to upload a certain number of Health Summaries per quarter to qualify for the payments, which have been used to bolster our own IT infrastructure, amongst other things for the practice.

However, during COVID, this process has become less frequent, and we have fallen short a numberof times of meeting this quota. The video above outlines the process for the upload of the summaries, which has changed slightly since they were originally required in the earlier days of the rollout. It's suggested that you upload a new health summary when:

• A patient receives a vaccination
• A long-term medication is either ceased or added
• An allergy is recorded/no longer applies

Accessing the summary is simple enough - while in a patient file, press SHIFT and F9 (NB: the 'red box' the 'My Health Record' button often simply indicates that the record has not been accessed from this site). The video above walks you through the process of adding a new health summary!

To access other information from the record, push CRTL + F9!

Changes to MHCP Billing from December...

REPRINT: Doctors' Committee - position vacant!

In 2014, CSMP suffered a ransomware attack - if you're not sure what that means, our clinical software was locked, and we were unable to access either patient data, or open any programs, and  were told that we had to pay a 'not insignificant' sum for the encryption to be removed.

'Fortunately', the encryption simply 'locked' our access to the data, rather than have a copy downloaded and the privacy and safety of our patients breached. Due to numerous safety processes and data backups, we restored our system in a matter of hours and were able to lock out further cyber threats of a similar nature, at least for the time being.

In 2021, a patient's computer had been infected with a Trojan (a program that is seemingly innocuous, but when opened can have a similar effect to the incident mentioned above) that attempted to download itself over  Zoom. This time, as our firewall is adaptive (much like the immune system), the trojan was prevented from downloading itself, and the Zoom program has been quarantined on our firewall since to avoid such an incident happening again.

Unfortunately, these attacks are becoming more sophisticated, and require more aggressive actions be taken to protect both our ability to provide care, but also the sensitive information of our patients. The most recent attacks have come from 'known' senders, such as allied health or operators using their identities, but more often than not patients with poor cyber security on their own systems (one such incident caused the firewall to disconnect the server from the rest of the network to avoid potential infection). Ultimately, we take whatever precautions we can, but the fact is that there is still a very real risk despite these policies and systems.

It's also a fact that organisations that publish their email addresses are far more likely to be the targets of cyber attacks, and so only providing the email address to trusted organisations on demand is one basic security measure that we've taken. The other is to insist that patients use our 'Contact Us' form to submit documents, forms or images, as this provides us with one extra layer of security by passing through an external firewall before arriving at our digital doorstep.

So TL;DR - please do NOT ask patients to email the practice; please ask them to use the appropriate portal, and if they ask why, ask them if they're still with Optus or Medibank.

UPDATE: since publishing, there have been a further 2 attempts of data breaches - please do NOT give out the practice's email address to patients!

Did You Check the MHR...? (RPT)

While we now have regular and generally reliable access to the National Cancer Screening Registry (NCSR) through Best Practice, a number of pathology providers have begun adding results into patient MHRs - notably Laverty, who have notoriously problematic staff manning the phones should you need to chase a result (record i 40+ mins followed by hanging up).

If you're looking for in-hospital pathology or other results for a patient, please check the MHR first before contacting reception to chase - it may save EVERYONE time!

Coming Events...

• Secret Santa - Confirm by Monday, 14th November! - This year's Secret Santa will again be an OPT-OUT affair! If I don't hear from you (either through Teams, SMS or Best Practice), I'll assume you're 'in' the pool!