GP Liaison

Located at the Royal Park Campus, the GP Liaison Unit works across all areas of the Royal Melbourne Hospital to improve communication and collaboration with community based providers.

Some of the activities we are involved in include:

• Improving communication with GPs through outpatient letters, discharge summaries and notification of patient events such as admissions and discharges, outpatient appointments and elective surgical waitlist additions
• Advocating for the needs of General Practice when planning new services or programs and ensuring that new initiatives are communicated to General Practice in a timely manner
• Assisting GPs and other community based primary care services to access appropriate services (inpatient, outpatient, emergency) for their patients by responding to phone and email enquiries

Current issues with faxing system

September 2, 2021

The Parkville precinct hospitals (Royal Melbourne Hospital, Royal Women's Hospital, Royal Children's Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre) are currently experiencing issues with our faxing system.

GPs may be receiving some coversheets with no documents attached or not receiving correspondence you are expecting. Please be patient as we work to rectify the issues.

For urgent correspondence requests for RMH patients, please contact:

Health Information Services

Phone: (03) 9342 7359
Fax: (03) 9342 8008
Email: rmhhisfaxrequests@mh.org.au

Requesting patient information

There is now a streamlined process for requesting patient information from Health Information Services at the RMH:

Communication with General Practice

Secure messaging and faxing

The Royal Melbourne Hospital sends most correspondence by Argus Secure Messaging including inpatient and Emergency Department Discharge summaries and Outpatient letters. If your practice does not use Argus, this correspondence is sent by fax. If your practice would like to receive correspondence from the RMH electronically, you need to subscribe to Argus Secure Messaging.

Our Outpatient Department and Elective Surgery Access teams send GP notifications by fax to acknowledge receipt of referrals, accepted referrals and declined referrals with reasons.

Not your patient? Changed your clinic details?

If you receive correspondence for a patient that does not attend your clinic, please let us know either email or fax to GP Liaison.

If any details for your practice change (for example, phone, fax, address or providers), please contact the National Health Services Directory (NHSD) to update your details, as this is where we obtain all GP details.

My Health Record

The Royal Melbourne Hospital is connected to My Health Record and uploads inpatient discharge summaries and limited pathology and radiology results for RMH patients. This does not replace our correspondence to GPs as letters and discharge summaries will still be sent to GPs by Argus and fax.

See the My Health Record website for more information.

Parkville Connect

Parkville Connect is the provider portal for the shared Electronic Medical Record at The Royal Melbourne Hospital, The Royal Children’s Hospital, The Royal Women’s Hospital and Peter Mac. Parkville Connect allows GPs (and other health professionals) secure access to:

• patient information such as upcoming outpatient appointments
• discharge summaries
• outpatient letters
• progress notes
• allergies
• current medications.

GPs can view records for patients who have nominated their GP practice at the RMH.

For patients who are attending a GP practice temporarily, relevant information for that patient can be released to Parkville Connect for viewing as per the usual information request process if the practice is registered for Parkville Connect.

To register your practice and associated clinicians for Parkville Connect, please ensure that all your practice information is up to date in the National Health Services Directory (NHSD) as we use this to verify all details. It is recommended that all clinicians are included when registering your practice.

To register, visit the Parkville Connect website and direct any queries to: support@parkvilleconnect.org.au

To request patient information be released to Parkville Connect, please complete the Parkville Connect consent form.

Statewide Referral Criteria

There are new outpatient referral criteria for a range of conditions within a number of specialties that apply within all public hospitals in Victoria. The RMH are now triaging referrals for these conditions against these new criteria.

See the Statewide Referral Criteria page for detailed information and tip sheets.

The Department of Health website has additional information on the Statewide Referral Criteria.

Specialist and consultant correspondence

RMH Health information and Medical Records are now connected to Argus.

Specialists and consultants who use Argus secure messaging can now send patient correspondence to Health information and Medical Records at the RMH.

Read our guidelines how to add the RMH Health information / Medical Records to your Argus address book and send correspondence electronically to the RMH to be directly uploaded to the patient’s medical record.

Emergency Department

Are you a GP looking for some clinical advice about a patient who might need to come to ED or want to flag a patient who is on their way to ED? You can now contact our Doctor at Triage on (03) 9342 4801.