POLAR patient flagging – function overview

POLAR Patient Flagging is a grouping structure designed to enable practices and PHNs to identify (in a privacy-protecting way) a specific cohort of patients to provide additional services or perform analysis.

POLAR can filter and extract data from a practice’s patient file if it is recorded in a field POLAR can read.

Currently there are limitations and not all patient information can be searched for or filtered, both within the practice clinical software such as Best Practice or Medical Director, and by the POLAR clinical audit tool.

Outcome Health has developed a patient flagging system in POLAR which may assist in filling this gap in functionality.

How to use Patient Flagging in your practice

There are many potential use cases for POLAR Patient Flagging, two of these are outlined below:

Use 1. Identifying patients living in a Residential Aged Care Home (RACH)

A practice may wish to generate a list of patients who reside in a RACH to identify those who are eligible or overdue for healthcare items.

In the POLAR Clinic Summary report, a practice POLAR user can apply general demographic filters, such as age, to create a list of patients who may reside in a RACH.

The practice can then access the Patient Flagging function to apply a Flag to those patients who they identify as living in a RACH.

Within the Clinic Summary report the RACH flagged patients can then be retrieved and filters applied to identify those who, for example, are eligible for a shingles vaccination.

Use 2. Identifying patients who have refugee status

Similarly, a practice can flag patients who have refugee status.
General demographic filters can be applied in the Clinic Summary report, such as ethnicity/country of birth, to generate a list of patients who may have refugee status.

On the Patient Flagging page, patients identified as having refugee status can be flagged.

This patient list can then be retrieved in the Clinic Summary report and filters applied to identify those who are potentially eligible for a Health Assessment or missing immunisations.

Advanced POLAR use of the Patient Flagging function

Practices can use and apply Flags created by their PHN such as the RACH and Refugee Flags, or create their own Flags based on their requirements.

Flag creation and management

The Flagging function can be accessed via either the POLAR landing page or from within the Clinic Summary Report.

On the Flags Setup and Patient Flagging pages, practices may see two types of Flags listed:

Practice-level Flags

Practice-level Flags are created by the practice and have an ‘Edit’ function. These Flags are only visible and available to the practice which created them.

PHN-level Flags

PHN-level Flags are created by the PHN and do not have an ‘Edit’ function – Practices can use these Flags if the PHN has granted the practice access. PHN Flags will be differentiated by a ‘PHN’ prefix when applying a Flag.

A PHN may create Flags and assign to practices for use, for example, for a project or data analysis. Flags created by a PHN cannot be modified, edited or deleted by the practice.

A PHN is not able to Flag patients as they do not have access to a practice’s identified data.

Flag Status

Every Flag must have at least one Status.

A Flag can have multiple statuses but only one Status can be allocated to a patient with that Flag at any given point in time.

The Status allocated to a patient can be changed, for example if a patient moves through various stages of a program. A patient can be attached to more than one Flag with a Status for each Flag.