The move comes as authorities lay the groundwork for a system to share electronic medical records between health services.
Eventually, GPs and hospitals will be able to electronically view key details such as current medications and allergies when treating a patient from another health service.
Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local was last year named as one of three GP networks given $12.5 million in federal funds to lead the way towards rolling out e-health records.
Information systems manager Simon Carr said 88 out of 204 northside medical practices had so far been assigned organisation numbers under the new system.
Mr Carr said software installed at those practices was used to match up the details of individual patients to a corresponding 16-digit unique code held by Medicare.
Medicare last year assigned a special number to every Australian enrolled in Medicare or Department of Veterans' Affairs programs, but these need to be matched with GP patient records for the e-health push to move ahead.
“As of today we have 41,788 patients with a matched individual healthcare identifier in the north Brisbane area,” Mr Carr told brisbanetimes.com.au yesterday.
Mr Carr said the next step was to get patients to consent to the sharing of summary health information, such as allergies, medications and current conditions.
Efforts to seek consent from northside patients would happen in the next few months, he said.
The Gillard Government has trumpeted the push towards shareable electronic health records, saying about two or three per cent of hospital admissions were linked to medication errors.
However, it has played down privacy concerns and insisted a personally controlled electronic health record would not be mandatory to receive health care.
Australians will be able to opt-in to establish a personally controlled e-health record from July next year.
Mr Carr said his organisation was working to assign unique codes to medical practices, individual GPS and their patients.
“To enable a patient to have a shared health summary we have to have all of these foundational building blocks in place,” he said.
“The tricky thing in this whole e-health journey is these foundational things, a lot of people assume they're already there. Patients just think things are connected and information just flows freely, but the reality is without these crucial numbers none of the information will flow.”
Mr Carr stressed the fact that now patients had unique identifiers did not mean they had a personally controlled e-health record.
“Just because you have a number doesn't mean to say you have a record, and just because you have a number, doesn't mean to say the GP is providing information to the record,” he said.
“And there becomes a bit of a misconception out there that because you have a number, you now have a record, and someone somewhere will know everything about your health because everything is linked to your number, which is inaccurate.”
Mr Carr said ultimately, the shareable record would not contain “everything the doctor ever wrote about you being transmitted to some webpage where someone can read it all”.
Instead, it would feature concise, specific information that was important to other health care providers but could be controlled by patients.
Mr Carr predicted the debate over privacy would diminish when tangible e-health benefits could be seen.
“I mean real benefits – I mean when you hear a story about the patient that turns up to the emergency department that is allergic to morphine but isn't able to communicate that, and they might be saved because of that,” he said.
“Or even an elderly patient that is transferred from the aged care facility to the hospital but has an end of life plan that says do not resuscitate, but that fails to go with the patient, but is accessible through a shared record in the emergency department and they are not resuscitated.”
The areas initially targeted by Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local include suburbs north of the Brisbane river and suburbs up to North Lakes.
GPs will soon identify chronic and complex patients and ask them to consent to making medical summaries available to other health providers they come in contact with.
Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local hopes to sign up 30,000 patients for these summaries by mid-next year.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Daniel Hurst
Quelle/Source: Brisbane Times, 13.08.2011
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