In her speech at a health conference this week, Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said there were around 520,000 patients on board.
"The government set a goal to have about half a million patients on the national e-health records system by the middle of this year. Not only did we meet this goal, we’ve exceeded it," Ms Plibersek said.
But the government had set a goal of hitting 500,000 by the end of the financial year, according to the 2012-13 budget papers.
Earlier this month a Health Department spokeswoman confirmed that the total number of PCEHR users by June 30 was 397,745 registrations, a shortfall of around 100,000.
The spokeswoman said the number of registrations hit 497,378 on July 14 and was nearly 530,000 yesterday.
There are no figures on the number of people logging into the system or how they were using it.
Ms Plibersek said nearly 5000 GP practices, hospitals, and other healthcare organisations had signed up, covering all the nurses, doctors and other health professionals in those organisations.
More than 16 million patient healthcare documents had been uploaded to the system.
"We’ve invested more than $160 million in general practices to upgrade their computer systems for e-health.
"We’ve built the Healthcare Identifier service that has created more than 22 million digital e-health passports -- identifying every Australian for healthcare purposes.
"And we’ve built the $467m national e-health records system, which has the potential to connect every single Australian to every single doctor in the nation," Ms Plibersek said.
She said a patient's e-health record can now hold a summary of a patient’s important medical history, list of medications prescribed and dispensed, allergies, hospital discharge reports and organ donor status.
It also shows advanced care planning details, summaries of individual patient health events, Medicare and PBS claims data, and private notes patients make about their own health, she said.
Childhood immunisation records and child health and development information can also be stored in the system.
She announced $8m to store patients' blood tests and x-ray results in the PCEHR.
The minister said the government had put "strong foundations in place, but there is more to do to unleash the full potential of e-health for patients."
However a survey by the members-only Australian Doctor magazine showed a majority of doctors shunning the PCEHR more than a year after its launch.
About 58 per cent of respondents said they would never take part in the scheme and will not be promoting its use to patients.
Around 29 per cent said they would be taking part but have yet to write a health summary.
Only 6 per cent have written health summaries for the PCEHR.
Seven per cent said they would not be personally taking part, but colleagues in their practice were.
The online poll comprised 514 participants.
The National E-health Transition Authority was charged with building the system, with Accenture as its main contractor.
GPs like Edwin Kruys have called for the system to be scrapped before more money is invested in it.
"We have been requesting the government and NEHTA for a long time to improve the system and make it more usable for clinicians," Dr Kruys, who is part of a 20-person medical practice in Geraldton, WA, said.
"If the government doesn't listen, the PCEHR will be another Labor white elephant."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Fran Foo
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 19.07.2013
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