IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

In the new e-health records the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) will be developed and improved. The government has been planning to introduce the national blueprint since long. It has been confirmed that the new procedure will be completely functional by 1 July 2012.

Allocated a mysteriously precise sum of $466.7m over two years in that budget, it now appears the decision was made by the boss in a hurry, without the benefit of proper cabinet consideration as former health minister Nicola Roxon revealed last week.

Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek said $10 million had been allocated to ensure all Australians could have control over their end-of-life care.

“Most families want to be true to the wishes of their loved ones as they approach the end of their lives, and Advance Care Directives allow that to happen,” Ms Plibersek said.

Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek has admitted the take up of electronic health records will likely be slow in the first few years.

People can register to have an e-health record from July, however, doctors have long argued the opt-in system could prove problematic.

Federal health minister, Tanya Plibersek, has admitted the take up of electronic health records will likely be slow in the first few years.

People can register to have an e-health record from July, however, doctors have long argued the opt-in system could prove problematic.

"There are only so many times doctors are going to stop and look to see if their patient has opted in and given them access to their personally-controlled electronic health record (PCEHR)," Australian Medical Association (AMA) president, Steve Hambleton, said on Wednesday.

Australia's e-health record system has brought down the rate of mortality in Queensland, according to the CEO of CSIRO.

The Australian government's e-health record system is a lifesaving initiative, according to the chief executive of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), who said the scheme has been so successful in Queensland that the mortality rate has decreased.

With $467 million being spent on personal e-health records by July next year and a further $350m committed to tele-health initiatives from this July, observers are not expecting any new money for health IT projects.

But, as the house inquiry into the role and potential of the National Broadband Network is demonstrating, medical connectivity cannot wait for the NBN.

Speaking at Kickstart 11 this week, Kathryn Kerr, AusCERT’s manager for analysis and assessments, said that to date there was not much information available about the operation of the PCEHR but she believed patients would be able to nominate who would have access to that record, providing access to the record for themselves, health professionals, family members or carers.

Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local chief executive Abbe Anderson told a Senate inquiry inspecting legislation for the e-health project that her implementation site now planned to sign up the first consumers to test live shared health summaries in mid-March, rather than January 30 as previously planned.

In January, NEHTA revealed that it had paused the implementation of primary care e-heath software at the e-health trial sites in North Brisbane, Melbourne, the Hunter, South Brisbane, Western Sydney, St Vincent's, Calvary, Cradle Coast, the Northern Territory and Mater. This pause was due to detected technical incompatibilities for specifications pushed out to the sites in November 2011.

South Australia's electronic health record (EHR) was to be one of the first in the national push for electronic patient records, a national project already marred by delays.

SA Health's Enterprise Patient Administration System (EPAS) is made up of clinical, patient administration and billing modules. It was due to go live in the first week of March. It will form one of four projects in a $408 million upgrade of the state organisation's systems.

NEHTA chief executive Peter Fleming confirmed that the National Authentication Service for Health (NASH), being built by IBM under a $23.6 million contract project-managed by NEHTA, would not be ready for July 1.

The Federal Government announced July 1 as the start date for new online medical records system, which aims to improve the availability of information for doctors and patients.

The secure electronic records are expected to include medications, allergies, immunisations, doctor and hospital notes, and prescriptions.

Little-known provisions in the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record program allow people to register using another name for privacy reasons, for example, if they are taking extra precautions to avoid an abusive spouse or are worried their reputation will suffer if their health status becomes publicly known.

A Katoomba-based hospital has kicked off a trial under which it will share electronic discharge summaries with GPs and vice versa, ahead of the Federal Government’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) launch in July 2011.

The trial is being conducted by the Greater Western Sydney (GWS) PCEHR lead implementation site and was funded by the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) and the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA).

But the Hunter GP organization which has the responsibility of delivering the new electronic health system in the region had claimed that the program is on track and soon there would be a national rollout of the service. They are confident that the first phase of the rollout would be started by the 1st of July. The federal government first intends to roll out the service in Newcastle, Melbourne and Brisbane and eventually in the rest of the country.

While the group is supportive of the government's $466 million e-health program because of the benefits it would bring to rural communities, it has raised concerns with the approach the implementation has taken at this point.

Every Australian has been assigned a 16-digit identification number but they won't automatically get an e-health record when the system starts in mid-2012.

Instead, they'll have to choose to participate.

With government funds flowing for delivery of the $467 million personally controlled e-health record system, Fleming says the second wave will spread the activity across the country.

"There were a significant number of responses (for the $55m funding pot) and these will allow us to dive deeply into various sectors, such as aged care," he says. "We've had people in the Health Department working right through Christmas evaluating these applications so we're ready to start the new year running. We're fairly close to being able to put forward recommendations to the minister."

Victorian Premier Ted Ballieu said yesterday that the Budget "delivers the right economic strategy to put Victoria's finances onto a stronger foundation for the future, while managing the tight financial constraints imposed by international economic uncertainty, a weaker national economy and consequent declines in state revenue".