The federal government is trying to hose down alarm over privacy by rebranding its planned e-Health scheme the "personally controlled electronic health record system", and insisting that patients will be able to control what information is fed into the database, and who can access it.
Patients will be given the choice of opting in to the system, even though all Australians will automatically be given a new identification number that can be linked to their medical records.
The budget papers say patients will be able to access their eHealth records when and where needed.
"Australian consumers and authorised healthcare providers (will be able to) access their personally controlled electronic health records via the internet," the papers state. "It will help reduce avoidable hospital admissions, adverse healthcare incidents relating to medication mismanagement, and the need for duplicate tests and procedures because original results are not available between care settings."
Pharmacists will be paid 15c every time they dispense a prescription downloaded from the database, to encourage a phasing-out of scrawled paper prescriptions -- a measure the budget papers show will cost taxpayers an extra $75m over five years.
But the system depends on co-operation from the states and territories which, the papers say, "will need to continue their planned or expected investments in core health information systems".
The Council of Australian Governments has yet to sign off on this $286m cost over four years.
The ambitious project is still in the planning stages, as the government has yet to consult consumers or the medical profession.
The lower house has passed legislation for mandatory health ID numbers -- known as Healthcare Identifiers -- to be assigned to every Australian next financial year. But patients will be able to decide if they want to activate the ID number, and can choose what information -- if any -- is stored on the electronic database.
Doctors and other health professionals, such as pharmacists, would need a patient's permission to log into the eHealth record, although the government has yet to draft legislation setting out how the scheme will work.
Health Minister Nicola Roxon said yesterday 190,000 Australians a year were admitted to hospital due to medication errors, costing the health system $660m. "About 8 per cent of medical errors are because of inadequate patient information," Ms Roxon said.
"Clear, quickly available information will reduce such incidents, avoid unnecessary tests and save scarce health resources."
Ms Roxon said patients would be able to show up at any doctor's surgery in the country and have their medical records available 'at the touch of a button.
"Patients will no longer have to remember every detail of their care history and retell it to every care provider they see," she said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Natasha Bita
Quelle/Source: The Australian, 12.05.2010
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