Antenatal Shared Care Electronic Messages between GPs and The National Maternity Hospital
February 2020
Dear General Practitioner,
As you may be aware, here in The National Maternity Hospital (NMH) we introduced a fully electronic healthcare record for maternity and new-born Patients in January 2018 - we call it the MN-CMS (Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System).
As most GPs that we share our care with also have electronic patient records, we have now developed an electronic messaging system within the MN-CMS to allow the communication of antenatal consultation details from GPs to the NMH and vice-versa.
MN-CMS/GP electronic messaging is “live” in the NMH since Wednesday, 5th February 2020 with messages electronically transmitted to GPs via CompleteGP, Socrates, HealthOne and Helix Practice Manager. To underpin our roll-out, support documentation for your GP practice management electronic system is available from your system vendor.
Antenatal Shared Care Messages
Antenatal shared care messaging allows the electronic, bi-directional transfer of routine antenatal care information between GPs and the NMH.
The first antenatal shared care message still needs to be generated by the NMH to the GP (via our booking clinic), to ensure that the identifiers for a Patient within the Maternity Service are established within the GP practice software system and thereafter two-way communication can take place. This means that your initial maternity referral will remain via paper in the usual manner.
If there is anything urgent or critical that needs action before the next routine hospital visit, then you should communicate that in the normal fashion, i.e. by telephone call to the hospital or an urgent referral to Maternity Services. Please note though that the shared antenatal care messaging is not a form of instant messaging between GPs and the maternity services
Our future plans include antenatal shared care messaging as part of a wider online patient portal through which Patients will be able to review their antenatal shared care record. This more “public nature” of Patient healthcare record, even though access will be controlled through appropriate permission and restrictions, is important to understand and be aware of when especially regarding the documenting comments or notes.
Support for this Service
If you should encounter any technical problems with antenatal shared care messaging, the best support can be accessed by contacting the Healthlink helpdesk (01 8287108 or support@healthlink.ie) who can help you if you believe that antenatal messages are going missing or if there are technical or display issues with the messages.
If you encounter clinical problems or queries with the content of the messages, please contact the National Maternity Hospital on 01 637 3100.
Yours faithfully,
The National Maternity Hospital