Message Types
The following list details the message types within GP Communicator:
Clinical messages are the core messages types consisting of data coming in and out of Vision 3. GP Communicator currently supports these types of message:
- Registration - The EDIFACT message type is:
- FHSREG for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
- REGIS in Scotland.
- Pathology Reports - The EDIFACT message type is MEDRPT.Note - PC supports both EDIFACT (RFA4+ and RFA99 versions) and ASTM pathology reports.
- Kettering format XML - OOH and Discharges (not Scotland)
- Bowel Cancer Screening messages (England) – NHS004
- QOF/QAIF (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) - XML
Scotland
The following message types are transported by eLinks within Scotland:
- EDIFACT Regis and RECEP
Scottish Care Information Stores (SCI Stores) is used to deliver pathology messages using an XML message type of Test Report.
Receipt Reports are messages sent by the receiving system in response to a clinical message, they notify the original sender of the status of the received file.
The following Receipt Reports may be seen:
- Registration - EDIFACT message type is RECEP.
- Pathology (direct from lab only) - EDIFACT message type is NHSACK and is also known as the acknowledgement report, see Pathology Messages.
- QMAS - Received as acknowledgements for QOF reports, within 48 hours in Scotland. See QOF Report Messages to and from NMAS - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Non-clinical message are any message found in the GP Communicator mailbox that it does not recognise. As GP Communicator is designed to process clinical messages, it cannot process non clinical mail, it should therefore be viewed, a note taken of what it is and who should have received it if possible, and then deleted.
The message type for pathology messages is MEDRPT .
Most practices receive a mixture of NHS002 and NHS003 messages. For each incoming NHS003 message received, an acknowledgment message (NHSACK) is sent to the pathology laboratory, so they know if a message has failed. For the NHS002 message NHSACK acknowledgment is optional and the pathology laboratory can switch off the acknowledgment for each message.
There is no receipt report for ASTM type pathology messages
To view the acknowledgment for a pathology message, select from the message.
The NHSACK has five stages. These stages can be viewed from the top line of the message audit trail:
- IAF - Everything is successful. The pathology message is sent to Mail Manager.
- IAP - The Interchange is fine, but some messages have failed and not been processed. Contact your laboratory to request they should resend the messages.
- IRI - There is a problem at interchange level, and the whole interchange has been rejected. Contact your laboratory to request they should resend the messages.
- IRM - The interchange has failed because the problem is at message level, with problem(s) with one or more of the messages.
- IRA - Similar to IRM, but every message has failed.
The audit trail shows the reason for IRI, IRM and IRA failures, and the acknowledgment going back to the path lab tells them how to deal with it. You can reject a message, by selecting Reject.
In addition MA means Message Accepted, while MR means Message Rejected.
Scottish Care Information Stores (SCI Stores) are central repositories for pathology results from multiple labs.
At regular intervals, GP Communicator retrieves the latest pathology test results and forwards them to Mail Manager as XML messages. SCI test results store the date and time they were input into the SCI Store. Vision 3 stores the date/time of the most recent result extracted from the SCI Store, and uses this as the basis of the next request (fro example, retrieves all results added since this date).
There are 17 SCI Stores in Scotland, each one covering one or more laboratories/trusts. Each lab transmits to a local SCI Store. A single practice may have to link to more than one of these stores, depending on its location, to receive all test results.
The QMAS messages are encapsulated in a single XML document which covers three transmission types:
- Registration – Request to register the practice on QMAS
- Report – Regular (monthly) and Interim (ad hoc) reports to QMAS
- Acknowledgement – DIS responses to Register and Report messages, indicating approval or rejection.
In general, there are outgoing QOF Report messages and incoming Receipt reports.
If you select an outgoing QOF Report, addressed to QOF Reporting DIS, then select Contents, in addition to the Plain Text and Audit Trail tabs, there is also an XML Viewer tab.
This displays the figures in the QOF Report for each QOF quality indicator, eg, CHD02 Denominator [x], CHD02 Indicator [y] and so on.
Right click within this screen to select from Print, Export to Microsoft Excel, View Source etc.
Receiving OOH Reports/Discharge Summaries in Rich Text Format
Some Discharge Summaries and Out of Hours messages are not recognised by the GP Communicator and are stored in the GP Communicator Outlook account as email messages. To resolve these messages:
- From GP Communicator , select Tools - Resolve Incoming.
- The Do you wish to Resolve emails? message displays:
- Select Yes to accept the message.
The message can now be processed through the system in the usual way.
When a message is received by GP Communicator, an automatic acknowledgement receipt message is sent to the sender to confirm successful receipt. Some Out of Hours Reports and Discharge Summaries are sent as Kettering Format XML messages so there is no MESH return address available, the receipt reports therefore go into error. To select whether acknowledgement receipts are sent for Kettering Format XML Messages:
- From GP Communicator , select the Addresses folder.
- Right click on the address you wish to change and select Properties.
- From the Clinical Address screen, select EDI Options.
- By default the address is set to send acknowledgement messages. To stop this process, remove the tick from Produce Acknowledgements:
- Select OK to save.