Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™)

The developer guide is intended to get you up-and-running with using the PCA™ API. It covers everything you need to know from registration, authorisation, participation to publication and subscription.

The PCA™ Identity and Access Manager supports two patterns when it applies the access control.

Register our system as a client with the PCA™ Identity and Access Manager as per OAuth 2.0 Dynamic Client Registration Protocol – RFC 7591.

Before using PCA™ as a publisher or subscriber, an organisation must, register, submit a participation agreement by an individual representative of the organisation, authorise a client for that organisation.

This section explains how to configure Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) for publisher operations.

This section explains how to configure PCA™ for subscriber operations.

This section outlines a common implementation pattern for writing (creating / updating) information with the PCA™.

Outlines the API calls available to developers who wish to connect software to PCA™

The following code samples are written in Python and provided as samples only.

The Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) FHIR® Implementation Guide is an HL7™ FHIR® specification for the APIs offered by the Provider Connect Australia™ service.

Currently, the only channel to authorise publication of service offerings is through the PCA™ Portal. 

The _count search parameter returns the number of requested resources per page (excluding the resources returned with _include search parameter) as requested by the client.

Now that we have created a Location we want to add one or more Healthcare services that are delivered at that Location.

We have already created the Organization resource as part of the participation configuration process and now we need to create Locations for the Organisation.

Now that you have created an Organization and HealthcareService at a Location, and have found a Practitioner, you can create a PractitionerRole.

Before you can create a PractitionerRole, you must first find an existing Practitioner using their AHPRA Registration Number.

Prior to registration, the client software needs to generate a 2048-bit RSA key pair as defined in PKCS #1: RSA Cryptography Specifications – RFC 8017 and conveyed using  JSON Web Key (JWK) – RFC 7517.

Before a client can interact with the PCA™, it needs to generate a JSON Web Token (JWT) - RFC7519 that will be used to authenticate the client to the PCA™ Identity and Access Manager.

Once you have a signed authentication JWT, the client can request an access token.

This operation is for user-based authorizations only.

When you have found a partner service (HealthcareService), you can download the information use statement to inform the publication authorise operation.

Based on the criteria defined in the notification channel above and upon receipt of POST to https://sm-r-us.com.au/my-notification-channel2 the subscriber issues a search operation.

Once a business partner has attempted to match the service offerings that a publisher has authorised, it may provide the status of those matches back to the PCA™ for the publisher to download. This provides confirmation back to the publisher of the status of matched records.

In some cases where the requesting subscription system is stateless or in events where you want all elements referenced irrespective of whether they have changed, a requesting system may use other filter expressions.

One of the key features available to business partners is to prefill business partner online forms using PCA™. 

Registering a publisher organisation as a participant in the Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) can only be done through the Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) portal.

Access to register endpoint requires an initial access token (IAT) of type bearer. Publisher and Subscriber organisations must now request an IAT by registering their software details with the PCA™ Operator first.

In order for a subscriber to know that information has become available based on some defined criteria, the subscriber needs register a notification channel either via the Portal or using an API.

After creating a healthcare service(s) at a location, you can search for available partner services.

Once you have obtained service offerings from the PCA™, the business partner will use the sourced information to match records internally.

Registering a business partner organisation as a participant in Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) can only be done through the Provider Connect Australia™ (PCA™) portal.

The capability statement of the Publisher Agent is specific to the organisation and can be accessed using: 

Initially the client system will download all relevant records, so the <lastSync> will not be set.

The following summarizes the system-based authorisation mode of accessing the PCA™ API

In cases when a publisher submits a business partner identifier and the business partner identifies that an incorrect identifier has been provided the business partner can patch the identifier provided in PCA™.

Many of the PCA™ API operations can be accessed by applications with the authorisation of their currently logged in user.