Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Sometimes I Really Wonder About The Powers That Be. Do They Actually Think When They Release Material Like This?

This tiny reference appeared a few days ago.

Revised eHealth publications

The OAIC has published updated versions of eHealth records and healthcare identifiers resources. Minor amendments have been made to the existing resources to reflect the Australian Privacy Principles and update the language to reflect the current functionality of the personally controlled electronic health record system.
More here:
The full Office Of Information Commissioner page on e-Health is found here:
The updated documents can be found here:

eHealth privacy fact sheets for consumers

All well and good and useful. There is only one problem. The documents lack a change log so you can see what has been updated and quickly understand whether there are any implications for you.
It would not have been hard to do and would have helped a great deal!
Wanders off just shaking head…
David.

1 comment:

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

David,

I've always been concerned about the possibility of the PCeHR containing incorrect information. SO I went hunting.

I tried following a link on Fact Sheet 19 to the eHealth Learning Centre.

but it's a broken link. However that page did have a link to FAQs on ehealth.gov.au

I eventually got to an FAQ on pseudonyms

and guess what? At the bottom there is a section titled: "What should I do if I identify an error in my eHealth record?"

This has a description of what to do if you discover an error in a document (upload a new one and delete the old) You also need to call the eHealth help line and "let them know that you have identified a clinical safety issue and what steps your healthcare provider has taken to remedy the issue."

As far as I can see this information is not in any of the other FAQs. It seems strange that they've put it in an FAQ on pseudonyms.

It also seems to be a clunky way of correcting bad information and doesn't say what to do if there is a dispute or if you can't contact the healthcare providers who made the entry or uploaded the document.

And they are still confusing the terms pseudonymous and anonymous.