Are your National Health Services Directory details up to date?

  31 July 2024  NWMPHN   

The National Health Services Directory (NHSD) forms a critical link between hospitals, specialists and general practitioners, ensuring effective and efficient support for patients as they move through the health care system.

The NHSD is a comprehensive, national list of health services and practitioners. It is funded by the governments of Australia and managed by Healthdirect Australia. It is the mandatory source of truth for hospitals when determining where to send patient discharge summaries.

This means that if general practice and specialist listings are not up to date, there is a very real risk to patient health because discharge summaries may not be correctly delivered.

Provider Connect Australia logo

The fastest and most efficient way for health care providers to ensure their NHSD entries are accurate is to use Provider Connect Australia (PCA), an initiative of the Australian Digital Health Agency.

PCA is free to use and constitutes a single place to enter or update business information, services provided and comprehensive contact details.

The platform reduces data entry duplication and improves the accuracy and quality of health care service information. The information provided is quickly and easily available to hospitals, funders, health service directories, communications services, and other key partners in health care service delivery.

Full details on how to register with PCA and enter details are available on this digitalhealth.gov.au webpage.

General practices can also enter and update NHSD information via Healthdirect.