Overview
Healthcare provider organisations use Provider Connect Australia™ (also known as PCA™) to keep their business partners up to date with details about their organisation, locations, healthcare services, and the practitioners that provide these services.
Healthcare provider organisations can maintain their details using the PCA™ web application or a conformant publishing system. Publishing systems could include practice management software, clinical information systems or other administrative systems.
Publishing systems that integrate with the PCA™ FHIR® API will be able to synchronise saved details that are already stored in the publishing system with PCA™.
Business partners can use PCA™ to receive information that has been published to them from healthcare provider organisations. Business partners can receive notifications when information has changed or new data is available, to ensure that their customer details are always kept up to date.
Business partners that integrate with the PCA™ FHIR® API will be able to:
- Receive real time notifications when new changes are available
- Query the API for all changes since the last query
- Automate the matching and processing of data that has been published to them
- Prefill online forms using PCA™ to streamline the registration process for their customers
- Query the API for all changes since the last query
- Receive real time notifications when new changes are available
To become a business partner with PCA™, please email pca@digitalhealth.gov.au.
In the resources listed below:
- The Business Partner Welcome Pack contains guides to help business partners register their organisation with PCA™ to receive information that has been published to them from healthcare provider organisations.
- The Conformance product contains documentation and other resources related to software conformance requirements for software vendors to integrate their software with PCA™.
Developer guides
PCA™ - Getting started
The developer guide is intended to get you up-and-running with using the PCA™ API. It covers everything you need to know from registration, authorisation, participation to publication and subscription.
PCA™ - Access controls
The PCA™ Identity and Access Manager supports two patterns when it applies the access control.
PCA™ - Client registration
Register our system as a client with the PCA™ Identity and Access Manager as per OAuth 2.0 Dynamic Client Registration Protocol – RFC 7591.
PCA™ - Participation configuration
Before using PCA™ as a publisher or subscriber, an organisation must, register, submit a participation agreement by an individual representative of the organisation, authorise a client for that organisation.
PCA™ - Publisher operations
This section explains how to configure Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) for publisher operations.
PCA™ - Subscriber operations
This section explains how to configure PCA™ for subscriber operations.
PCA™ - Implementation patterns
This section outlines a common implementation pattern for writing (creating / updating) information with the PCA™.
PCA™ - API Reference
Outlines the API calls available to developers who wish to connect software to PCA™
PCA™ - Code Samples
The following code samples are written in Python and provided as samples only.
PCA™ - FHIR® Implementation Guide
The Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) FHIR® Implementation Guide is an HL7™ FHIR® specification for the APIs offered by the Provider Connect Australia™ service.
PCA™ - Authorise publication
Currently, the only channel to authorise publication of service offerings is through the PCA™ Portal.
PCA™ - Count and paging
The _count search parameter returns the number of requested resources per page (excluding the resources returned with _include search parameter) as requested by the client.
PCA™ - Create healthcare service
Now that we have created a Location we want to add one or more Healthcare services that are delivered at that Location.
PCA™ - Create location
We have already created the Organization resource as part of the participation configuration process and now we need to create Locations for the Organisation.
PCA™ - Create practitioner role
Now that you have created an Organization and HealthcareService at a Location, and have found a Practitioner, you can create a PractitionerRole.
PCA™ - Find a practitioner
Before you can create a PractitionerRole, you must first find an existing Practitioner using their AHPRA Registration Number.
PCA™ - Generate JWK set
Prior to registration, the client software needs to generate a 2048-bit RSA key pair as defined in PKCS #1: RSA Cryptography Specifications – RFC 8017 and conveyed using JSON Web Key (JWK) – RFC 7517.
PCA™ - Generate JWT
Before a client can interact with the PCA™, it needs to generate a JSON Web Token (JWT) - RFC7519 that will be used to authenticate the client to the PCA™ Identity and Access Manager.
PCA™ - Get access token
Once you have a signed authentication JWT, the client can request an access token.
PCA™ - Get authorization code
This operation is for user-based authorizations only.
PCA™ - Get information use statement
When you have found a partner service (HealthcareService), you can download the information use statement to inform the publication authorise operation.
PCA™ - Get service offerings
Based on the criteria defined in the notification channel above and upon receipt of POST to https://sm-r-us.com.au/my-notification-channel2 the subscriber issues a search operation.
PCA™ - Get status of matched records
Once a business partner has attempted to match the service offerings that a publisher has authorised, it may provide the status of those matches back to the PCA™ for the publisher to download. This provides confirmation back to the publisher of the status of matched records.
PCA™ - Include and iterate
In some cases where the requesting subscription system is stateless or in events where you want all elements referenced irrespective of whether they have changed, a requesting system may use other filter expressions.
PCA™ - Online forms integration
One of the key features available to business partners is to prefill business partner online forms using PCA™.
PCA™ - Publisher
Registering a publisher organisation as a participant in the Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) can only be done through the Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) portal.
PCA™ - Register client
Access to register endpoint requires an initial access token (IAT) of type bearer. Publisher and Subscriber organisations must now request an IAT by registering their software details with the PCA™ Operator first.
PCA™ - Register notification channel
In order for a subscriber to know that information has become available based on some defined criteria, the subscriber needs register a notification channel either via the Portal or using an API.
PCA™ - Search for partner services
After creating a healthcare service(s) at a location, you can search for available partner services.
PCA™ - Submit match record
Once you have obtained service offerings from the PCA™, the business partner will use the sourced information to match records internally.
PCA™ - Subscriber (Business partner)
Registering a business partner organisation as a participant in Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) can only be done through the Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) portal.
PCA™ - Subscriber capability statement
The capability statement of the Publisher Agent is specific to the organisation and can be accessed using:
PCA™ - Synchronisation
Initially the client system will download all relevant records, so the <lastSync> will not be set.
PCA™ - System-based authorisation
The following summarizes the system-based authorisation mode of accessing the PCA™ API
PCA™ - Update business partner identifier
In cases when a publisher submits a business partner identifier and the business partner identifies that an incorrect identifier has been provided the business partner can patch the identifier provided in PCA™.
PCA™ - User-based authorisation
Many of the PCA™ API operations can be accessed by applications with the authorisation of their currently logged in user.
