[LINK] Your Medicare records online

[Kim Holburn]

On 2010/Mar/03, at 2:40 PM, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:

>> If I get wheeled into a medical facility in some outpost in an
>> uncommunicative state, I'd hope that they had all relevant history
>> before taking any action.  Cheers iT
>
>
> Agreed. In this small country-town-outpost, we have a medical practice
> that is sometimes staffed by a doctor (it varies a lot) and when it is
> it's fairly often by some unknown young newbie locum.
>
> And at the larger town practices (all at least an hour or so away) the
> waiting list is several months. Thus, as a result, residents here tend
> to have a catch-doctor-as-catch-can medial consultation history.
>
> If these newbie doctors, (to us, and fairly often, newbie to medicine
> doctors) which we are sometimes lucky to be able to consult, (country
> medical-staffing is quickly getting worse) all have medical histories
> readily available, i think the health of country folk especially will
> surely benefit. At least, it might help newbie docs to avoid mistakes.
>
> It's fine for city-centric folk who have the luxury of permanence and
> choice in terms of doctors, and health care, but we country folk with
> very patchy (literally) medical care, really need some form of record
> keeping of our medical records which are available literally anywhere.

Perhaps Canberra would be a small country town by your definition, I  
have heard it described thus.  The waiting lists for even a basic GP  
consultation can be more than a week, the fact that at least one  
practise I went to recently told me that their books were closed even  
though my small daughter is a patient on their books.  I can get an  
appointment with a specialist in Sydney in less than a week but it's 6  
months or more in Canberra.  Several times I have found a good doctor  
here, then they move to another practise and their contract states  
that no-one's allowed to tell me where they've gone and the practise  
owns/retains my records so even if I did manage to track them to their  
new practise they wouldn't have my records.  grrrr.  Don't get me  
started ;-)

I am sure someone else will tell me Canberra has a fine, functioning  
medical system.  Maybe I'm on the wrong side of town or something.
</whinge>

Still not good to have my records online unless I can control who gets  
access.

As someone who occasionally lives in other countries this is all  
moot.  This is never going to be more than Australia wide.  If you  
find yourself in emergency in Moscow or Copenhagen or worse the USA  
it's not going to help.

Hmmm... actually it might be really useful if I could access my own  
records online but I bet it wouldn't be allowed.

Kim

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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