National consultations are now set to begin on the legislative framework to underpin the governance, privacy and agreed uses for national healthcare identifier numbers essential to a secure national e-health system.
The government says Healthcare Identifiers are unique numbers which will be given to all healthcare providers, healthcare centres and healthcare consumers.
These unique numbers have been developed to provide a new level of confidence when communicating patient information between the myriad of private and government healthcare providers and systems. To date there has been no single method of accurately and reliably identifying the patient receiving healthcare, the healthcare providers or the organisations managing care.
All Australian residents will be allocated an Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) to support better communication between healthcare providers involved in patient treatment – but no patient will be forced to use it to access any health service.
The IHI service will be managed initially by Medicare Australia. This will be separate to its funding and claims functions.
The IHI will not replace a patient’s Medicare number, which is used for claiming government healthcare benefits.
The consultations on the drafting of legislation build on earlier consultations with key stakeholders about the recommendations in the Australian Law Reform Commission’s report on its review of Australian privacy laws, including health privacy protections.
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Quelle/Source: Medical Devices+Equipment, 17.07.2009
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