Addressing Problems

When a clinical message is received by GP Communicator, it has to identify either the:

• Sender, for incoming messages
• Recipient, for outgoing messages

Issues with identification, are known as Address Problems.

These issues are easily resolved when we send normal emails. The author of the message selects an address from an address book (or types one in directly), and we know the address of the sender for incoming mail because their address is included in the email and most of the time we have this address in our address book. For clinical messages, as you may have gathered by now, is rather more complex.

In order to successfully deliver a piece of clinical mail, GP Communicator needs to have the following information available:

• Correctly configured address entry in the underlying mail system - This address must exist in the Personal Address Book of the main GP Communicator server. When posting mail from a clinical system, it should not normally be possible to address this to a non-existent entry in the Personal Address Book.
• Correct EDI codes - These need to be set on the clinical address entry so that EDIFACT interchanges can be generated correctly.
• Currently Active Clinical Address - The address needs to be marked as Currently Active in Clinical Address, see Editing a Clinical Address for details. This can also be used to temporarily suspend communication with a trading partner.

Outgoing messages can suffer the following exceptions due to Address Problems:

• Unknown Recipient - The address may not be known. The link between the transaction created in Vision 3 and the address entry in the Personal Address Book is the Health Link Mailbox address set up in Control Panel - File Maintenance - Organisations - TP/HB/CSA - Address tab - Communication number, and the Reference entry on the Address form in GP Communicator, for example, F0LDS. If this match is not found, the message cannot be translated.
• Address Not Active - The address may be recognised but is not clinically active. This may be because mandatory clinical address information, for example, Link Codes, is missing or because the address has been made inactive in order to prevent transmission of messages.
• Status Unavailable - The address may exist and be clinically active but causes a failure when attempting to deliver it to the network. There are a number of reasons for possible failure when delivering a message but insufficient information is passed back from the mail system to be any more helpful. The most likely cause is that the underlying address entry is invalid, corrupt, or blank.
• Not Delivered - The address may exist and be clinically active but the network is unable to deliver the message. The most likely cause of this when first communicating with a trading partner is that the underlying address is incorrect. If successful communication with the addressee has previously been established, then there may be a problem with their mail server. In the latter case, a retransmission at a later time is probably appropriate.

In all cases the message is copied to the Attention folder and a button appears. When the addressing problem is sorted out, select Retransmit. If this retransmission fails, you are informed of the fact and the message remains in the Attention folder.