Queensland Liberal Senator Sue Boyce asked why the material had not been released for public discussion when it was being circulated for commercial purposes.
Health deputy secretary Rosemary Huxtable said the draft concept of operations for the PCEHR had not been finalised.
However, she confirmed it had been released to potential bidders for a range of PCEHR contractors.
"It is certainly at a very advanced stage, and it has been provided as part of the documentation at industry briefings," she said. "But there is still work occurring in consultations through the National E-Health Transition Authority's processes.
"The fact (the draft) is not quite finalised is not really an impediment to bidders using it to better understand the government's expectations."
Ms Huxtable said tenders for a national infrastructure partner and other PCEHR programs had been put to the market, but no contracts had been let.
E-Health systems branch head Sharon McCarter said NEHTA's clinical leads group had been "pivotal in defining what will be contained in an e-health record, and how it would actually be viewed" by medical providers through a portal.
To questions from Senator Boyce about tardiness in involving consumers in the PCEHR consultation process, Ms McCarter said dialogue essentially began at a roundtable prior to the National E-Health conference in Melbourne last November.
"Certainly one of the key consumer concerns is around privacy, and ensuring there are appropriate controls for the consumer," Ms McCarter said. "And there was discussion around what information can be (masked) in the record."
E-Health strategy head Liz Forman said a Victorian Health department report that concluded the new $90m Healthcare Identifiers service patient numbers should not be relied on as a sole source of accurate information had been "welcomed".
"Certainly the team's level of enthusiasm is reflected in them doing such a thorough job," Ms Forman said. "The risk assessment report refers to using the individual healthcare identifier on its own -- it's never been the intention for the number to be used on its own as a form of identification.
"That report is quite a rigorous analysis of a whole lot of possible scenarios for using identifiers, where the risks are and how the system design will minimise that risk.
"Which is actually a very positive thing to do, and we welcomed the release of that material so it can be shared by other organisations looking at adopting identifiers."
Ms Forman said she was not aware of NEHTA doing any similar risk assessment.
"NEHTA's clinical leads and clinical safety teams have identified that there certainly would be risks using identifiers without some kind of mechanism to ensure they were used correctly," she said.
"That flows into the conformance testing process (which is being developed)."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Karen Dearne
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 25.02.2011
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