Dialog Health

Administration / Process

All health organisations require supporting administrative systems which align with corporate goals and are cost-effective so that they maximise the efficiency of the front-line medical services. Dialog’s success in this field is outstanding and includes consultancy services and solutions covering financials, record keeping, human resource planning, incident management and strategic planning.
The Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) is a Commonwealth regulatory agency located within the Health and Ageing portfolio responsible for a national scheme to regulate genetically modified organisms (GMO). Dialog was commissioned by the OGTR to analyse its business processes for the day-to-day regulation of gene technology in Australia and build an information system to manage these processes. Dialog delivered a system comprising:

  • Databases for all GMO applications, evaluations, licences and online public records
  • Publicly available records of all current GMO activity made available by extending the internal database to the web
  • A secure internet site for the lodgement and monitoring of various applications
  • Processes for committee management, document management and reporting
Medicare Australia is a Commonwealth Government statutory authority that supports the delivery of health care in Australia by administering services such as Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register.

Changes to the Medical Indemnity Insurance framework had the objective of supporting the continued provision of medical services to the Australian community by ensuring that health professionals have access to affordable indemnity cover. Medicare Australia commissioned Dialog to analyse and build an information system to administer the collection of contributions from individual participating members.

The system also manages the exemption and deferment provisions of those members. The Medical Indemnity Contribution Registration System was developed using Java, Web and DB2 technology utilising Apache Struts architecture.
A Fairer Medicare was an integrated set of measures which builds on the Government’s commitment to the universality of Medicare.

A Fairer Medicare was to deliver better access through a series of measures which would increase the size of the medical workforce, particularly in outer metropolitan and rural areas. The package initiatives were to:

  • Provide financial incentives to general practices to bulk-bill Commonwealth concession card holders

  • Enable all Australians, whether through Medicare or private health insurance, to access new protections to safeguard against high out-of-pocket costs for out-of hospital Medicare funded services which may build up over a year

  • Reduce upfront costs for all patients by requiring only the gap between the Medicare rebate and the doctor’s fee to be paid at participating practices

  • Increase the size of medical workforce to ensure continued access to health services, particularly for outer metropolitan and rural areas. This included funding to participating practices in areas of workforce shortage to employ practice nurses
Dialog defined the technical requirements of the new Fairer Medicare initiative’s General Practice Access Scheme and the Practice Nurse/Allied Health Worker Scheme for the development team.

Dialog also acted as a channel between the development team and policy, business analysts, system testing team and other affected business units of the Fairer Medicare with responsibility for:

  • Writing the Open and Close Project report to management

  • Writing the technical specifications for the project

  • Assisting the development team with business rules and requirements

  • Assisting testing team with test plan, test specifications and test cases

  • Managing issues arising from development
The Queensland Cardiac Consortium is a unit of Queensland Health that deals primarily with the analysis and tracking of cardiac patients’ treatment and recovery. These processes were supported by a number of small systems. To replace these Dialog built a system with a central integrated database which improved the accessibility and consistency of the information. A browser-based front end was employed in this application, making the system accessible to users across the Queensland Health Intranet without requiring any additional software on the client workstation.
Operating as Australian Pharmaceutical Healthcare Systems (APHS), a group of south east Queensland hospital pharmacies provides pharmacy management services to a total of seven pharmacies. Dialog was contracted to implement a customised version of the Navision Financials and Advanced Distribution software in order to provide necessary information management and communications tools.

The system, known as SMART, provides a total business environment for APHS. It enables them to maximise the benefit of shared purchasing, logistics and inventory by setting standard rules across the individual businesses. SMART will also enable APHS to adopt an e-business approach and participate in forthcoming Federal Government initiatives designed to introduce e-commerce capability to the health sector.

Future plans include building a Business to Business (B2B) interface enabling APHS to integrate seamlessly with its suppliers and clients. Integrating SMART with the planned federally funded Better Medicine Management System is also on the agenda. BMMS is a patient focussed initiative to improve patient care by allowing medical information to be shared between general practitioners, patients, pharmacies and hospitals.
The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne (RCH) has been providing care for Victoria’s children and their families for over 140 years. It is the major specialist paediatric hospital in Victoria and its care extends to children from Tasmania, southern New South Wales and other states around Australia and overseas.

Dialog to developed the ePIR application that tracks building works at the Royal Children’s Hospital. It incorporates workflow for approval. The solution has greatly improved the efficiency of the management of building works leading to construction cost savings.

Client Testimonials

“I just wanted to thank Dialog for all of the fantastic work in getting our Refugee Health Database up and running! We have really appreciated the consultant’s work, diligence, suggestions for the smooth and efficient operating of the database and system, the consultant’s patience in accommodating all of our requests, the thorough explanations, provision of user manuals, support and timely fashion in which you completed the work. We look forward to working with the new database and I especially look forward to the ease of my reporting when it is due!”
L. Smith Refugee Health and ABHI Project Officer General Practice Network NT
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