During the 2010 election campaign, Health Minister Nicola Roxon committed $12.5m to hand-picked GP divisions – GP Partners in Brisbane, GP Access in the NSW Hunter Valley and Melbourne East – to act as lead sites for the government’s $467m personally controlled e-health record program.
Health department documents show each site received $4.83m in grant funding on February 2, bringing the total to $14.5m. The projects are due for completion by June 30 2012, when a PCEHR is supposed to be available for every Australian who wants one.
On the same day, the federal Health department awarded a $38.5m six-month contract to the National E-Health Transition Authority for its management of the first stage of the PCEHR work. PCEHR contract. The three divisions each received $100,000 in grant funding last year to work up their proposals, while NEHTA pocketed a $300,000 grant for managing the process.
These grants caused some concern as many industry players thought the projects should have gone to open tender.
Each of the lead sites has a strong commitment to health IT reform, having been involved in previous e-health trials.
But the generous funding for participants and NEHTA may harden industry resolve, as only five GP desktop vendors have been “invited” to contribute their technical expertise on key implementation details, and with limited funds on offer to cover their costs. Vendor invitations. All medical software makers will eventually have to upgrade their products to meet Healthcare Identifier service and PCEHR requirements, but there is disquiet over the huge amount of work involved – as much as 10-15 man-years in development time and costs for each vendor. Development costs. Meanwhile, a further round of grants worth up to $55m will soon be announced by Ms Roxon for a “second wave” of e-health projects nationwide. The success of these will also depend on whether software-makers can upgrade their products in a very tight timeframe.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Karen Dearne
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 11.02.2011
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