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WA clinical alert policy
3 March 2017
WA clinical alert policy
Background
A clinical alert is a diagnosis which has the potential to be of critical importance to a patient’s management during the first 24 hours of their admission to hospital and assumes that the patient is not always capable of communicating such information. There are three classifications of clinical alerts; anaesthetic, medical and drug alerts.
By raising a clinical alert (also known as MedAlert) for approval to be entered onto the PAS (Patient Administration System including TOPAS / webPAS / HCare), critical clinical information can be immediately flagged from the PAS for notification to clinicians before the medical record is retrieved.
The WA Clinical Alert (MedAlert) Policy mandates the implementation of a standardised process of communicating clinical alerts across the WA health system using the PAS. Processes must be developed to communication of alert information between contracted health entities to the state and public health facilities.
The objective of this policy is to reduce the risk of patients having an adverse event due to a previously identified serious anaesthetic condition, specified medical condition, or serious unexpected drug reaction.
The WA Clinical Alert (MedAlert) Policy outlines the minimum requirements for the communication of clinical alerts to be recorded within patient health records and associated PAS throughout the WA health system to ensure consistently safe and immediately available clinical alert information to clinicians.
Resources
The following are documents to be used in conjunction with the WA Clinical Alert (MedAlert) Policy
More information
Medicines and Technology Unit
Address: 3 Forrest Place, Perth
Email: DoH.MedicinesandTechnologyUnit@health.wa.gov.au