
Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) is an Australian Digital Health Agency initiative to help healthcare providers update their business information in a single place. PCA™ provides a centralised location to update changes to the services your practice provides and the practitioners who provide them, which is then published to all your business partners.
Introduction
South Western Sydney PHN (SWSPHN) have partnered with Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) to help transform data accuracy and increase digital health interoperability across the Australian healthcare ecosystem. A growing number of healthcare providers and business partners are using the free PCA™ service to streamline their relationships and reduce their admin burden.
Watch this short video for a quick overview of how PCA™ works.
For Healthcare providers
The fastest way for healthcare providers to keep business partners and patients up-to-date with important business changes – like opening hours, contact information and healthcare services – is by updating their details through PCA™.
Once registered with PCA™, providers can choose to automatically send these important business updates to all their business partners, eliminating the need to manually update multiple platforms when their details change.
Provider Connect Australia™ allows the practitioner or healthcare provider to update their information in one location and publish it to all their business partners. For example:
- Medicare
- secure message providers
- hospitals
- healthcare directories
Using PCA™ saves practices time by preventing unnecessary duplications and reducing the likelihood of errors when filling out multiple forms.
PCA™ reduces data entry duplication and improves the accuracy and quality of healthcare service information. It lets you provide consistent, up-to-date information about healthcare services to funders, health service directories, communications services, and other key partners in your healthcare service delivery.
The use of PCA™ can significantly reduce the time spent updating business partners, ensures that updates are not missed, and reduces transcription errors that can occur with manual updates. PCA™ creates unique identifiers for healthcare services, service delivery locations and practitioners’ service delivery roles, allowing these to be reliably identified and linked across the healthcare system. These unique identifiers complement existing national identifiers for healthcare provider organisations and individuals.
Register for PCA™
Healthcare providers who register in PCA™ can publish their details directly to their PHN, and the National Health Services Directory’s Service Finder on the same day, making it easier for patients to find you.
You can self-register with Provider Connect Australia™ in your own time.
A PRODA account is required to register. Register for PRODA if needed.
Already have a PRODA Account? Start your PCA Registration from here:
Once registered, you can update your business information and it will automatically be sent to your registered business partners. This means you can maintain a single master copy of your organisation’s details and your chosen business partners will automatically receive any updates.
As of December 2023, more than 1,900 healthcare organisations across Australia are using PCA™ and a growing number of business partners are coming on board. Increasing the number of business partners who register will ensure PCA™ is a valuable healthcare provider resource. Over time, business partners will include pathology and radiology services, public service directories, secure messaging providers, insurers and more.
There are plans to integrate PCA™ into clinical systems such as Best Practice and MedicalDirector. When a new practitioner is added to your clinical management system this information will automatically upload into PCA™ and publish to your business partners. There will be no need to login to PCA™ separately.
Help with registering for PCA™
A step-by-step guide to Getting started with PCA™ is available.
The Agency's Digital Adoption Support team offers support to health providers registering for PCA by calling 02 6223 0741 option 3.
SWSPHN’s digital health team can also assist in the PCA™ registration process. Call 4632 3000 or email digitalhealth@swsphn.com.au.
PCA™ Business Partner
If your organisation relies on up-to-date information from health providers, PCA™ can streamline your provider registration process. Your organisation can receive automatic updates from the healthcare provider organisations you support and reduce or eliminate the potential for errors from manually transcribing information.
Become a PCA™ business partner
Email pca@digitalhealth.gov.au for more information or to book a meeting to become a PCA™ Business Partner.
Explore the benefits of registering as a PCA Business Partner.
Learn more about business partner benefits
To learn more about business partner benefits, Watch this video.
Visit the Australian Digital Health Agency website for references