[LINK] Governments change direction on health e-records

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmm,

Once again the patient is gonna get left holding the ball when it 
comes to efforts to integrate our health system.

The one common point of contact, the one responsible for reconciling 
the accounting and the service provision.

Isolated. Powerless. Impotent.

Makes sense.

With unions like the AMA and the like off-side, with health funds 
feeding at the trough, with rabidly independent suppliers of 
services, with whole industries (drug, specialist, hospitals etc) all 
making hay in the old system ... why change things?

I never thought any of the eHealth strategy would fly ... so I'm not 
surprised to see the Dodo that was produced.

				Regards,
---
At 10:08 AM +1100 13/10/09, Roger Clarke wrote:
>At 9:30 +1100 13/10/09, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>>Governments change direction on health e-records
>>http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,26200249-15319,00.html
>
>I posted comments in two emails to the privacy list this morning.
>
>
>On NEHTA and National eHealth Strategy:
>
>[Key points:
>-   "the original vision of a single e-health record system had been
>      abandoned in favour of "person-controlled" records that could be
>      adopted more quickly"
>-   Five years ago, there was a strong view that there would be an
>      e-health record for all Australians held on a massive database
>      somewhere. That's no longer the view.
>-   undoubtedly people will have an option to choose health records
>      from a range of sources and their medical information will be
>      stored in a number of locations
>-   While the use of patient identifiers may be optional initially,
>      Mr Fleming said, over time "we expect this to become ubiquitous"
>-   the role of government ... would be to ensure standards and
>      privacy rules are all met, but it will probably be necessary to
>      build an indexing service, as a person's records will likely be
>      scattered across various providers
>-   [legislation is necessary, yet] we'll continue down the
>      development path. For instance, we're working with Medicare
>      on a group of projects that start linking with and using
>      identifiers, such as discharge referrals
>
>[This shifts NEHTA in the direction of Criteria 1 and 2 of the APF's
>Policy on eHealth Data and Health Identifiers, but it still breaches
>Criterion 3:
>http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/eHealth-Policy-090828.pdf
>
>
>On NEHTA and Consumers:
>
>[In this and the acocmpanying interview, Fleming ignored consumers.
>
>[In Australian Public Service jargon, the term 'stakeholders'
>*excludes* citizens/consumers, and excludes their representatives and
>advocates.
>
>[Most agencies make some allowance for the public, but Human
>Services, Medicare and NEHTA work very hard to keep consumer and
>privacy advocates outside the fence.
>
>[This violates Principle 6 of the APF's Policy on eHealth Data and
>Health Identifiers, and endangers all of the Criteria:
>http://www.privacy.org.au/Papers/eHealth-Policy-090828.pdf
>
>
>--
>Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
>
>Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
>                     Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
>mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/
>
>Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
>Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University
>_______________________________________________
>Link mailing list
>Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
>http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link