LTC "Unable to connect to EAR" error message

Have you seen this error when updating LTC patients? Or seen a failed message in the LTC Manager or against a patient?

It does not necessarily mean your LTC updated has failed in the EAR portal.

The online Community Pharmacy Portal is the source of truth.

Steps to take

Check the patient on the EAR (Community Pharmacy) Portal to determine that the update actually failed.

After logging in, enter the failed NHI into the top line of the EAR Portal. 

• If it says the patient is registered at a different pharmacy, please contact that pharmacy and ask them to exit the patient from LTC. (Previously the error returned to Toniq advised of duplicate registrations, but now the error is Unable to connect to EAR).
  • Once the patient is exited from the other pharmacy, change the start date in Toniq to the day after they were exited. (You may need a super password for this, please contact Toniq.)
  • Note: there may be scenarios, such as when a pharmacy has closed, where LTC patient registration is no longer accessible by any pharmacy. Contact Whanau Tahi to exit the patients and thereby enable the re-registering of them.

• If the portal says that the patient is registered with your own pharmacy for LTC services, it means the EAR portal already has the data just sent.
  • The error message can be ignored for these patients.
  • There are a number of causes for the error in this scenario:
    • The portal already had the data being sent (no changes were made to that stored in the EAR).
    • Patients being reviewed a few days earlier than required.
    • Going into patients' LTC Details and updating them from Patient consent to Complete.
    • Viewing, but no LTC Details then pressing F12.
      • Toniq suggests pressing ESC in this instance.
  • Toniq is working on the error which creates the (annoying) incorrect failure messages.

 Note:

If you do not have access to the portal, or have concerns about payments, please contact the Te Whatu Ora. Either phone [phone] (option 2) or email [e-mail] 

Summary

Updates will succeed when LTC changes that are sent differ from the information held by the EAR portal.
Data sent that is the same as in the portal will give an error message. So, checking the online portal as outlined above is highly recommended.