Renai LeMay of the Australian Financial Review sent me this URL an hour or so ago.
What it shows is that neither the Health Information Society of Australia (HISA) or the Australian College of Health Informatics have been invited to the summit on the NEHTA Shared EHR (or whatever its new name is). Of course the GPCG and the MSIA are also left out.
This is just nonsense and it now becomes clear the influence of the ‘Dear Leader’ continues unabated in terms of consultation and communication.
It is offensive and a joke that this so called summit should be conducted with no one focussed on e-Health and no one who could really understand, in depth, NEHTA’s proposals.
If this oversight is not fixed in the next few days – you can be sure NEHTA will have lost the confidence of all those who could make its projects work.
David.
Late note: I have also now been told by e-mail other obvious exclusions seem to also include:
- Standards Australia
- HL7
- Consumer Health Forum
- Choice
- The peak privacy lobbies - only Privacy Commissioner invited
All these groups have a major interest in the area.
D.
NEHTA have also excluded peak consumer organisations concerned with
ReplyDeleteE-Health matters such as the Consumers' Health Forum & Choice!
Clearly these guys are crazy!
Cheers
Ken
--
Dr. Ken Harvey
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
School of Public Health, La Trobe University
http://www.medreach.com.au
VOIP: 03 9029 0634; Mobile 04 1918 1910
Without knowing what 'instructions' (parameters) were given to the person or 'organisation' responsible for pulling this together it is difficult to conclude that MSIA, Consumers' Health Forum, and some others have been intentionally excluded. It is quite conceivably simply an oversight. A phone call to Andrew Howard will clarify that.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that what we see here is just typical of the ongoing inability of NEHTA to understand who it should engage with in the Health Sector. I had hoped things would be different after the leadership change but have now become concerned change is not happening.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who understood the e-health sector would not have made such a basic mistake in their consultation list.
David.
The list of 54 is clearly drawn up from ‘inside’ NEHTA by someone focused on ‘all the organisations’ that are responsible for delivering or administering health services of one form or another or who are perceived as having a deeply vested interest in the sector! Presumably the Department of Health & Ageing, Medicare Australia and the State health jurisdictions will be represented or have they been omitted too?
ReplyDeleteNEHTA’s Clinical Lead Coordinator, Mukesh Haikerwal, is probably the driving force behind the summit. If not, who else might it be?
While the likes of MSIA, HISA, AHML and the Consumers’ representatives have not been included, neither have the National Prescribing Service, the NHMRC, the Royal Australian College of Medical Administrators and the Australian College of Health Service Executives and some others you have mentioned above.
It all depends on where one draws the line, or more importantly how well one understands the health sector - in all its dimensions - including the inter-relationships and inter-dependencies of all the participants and the diversity of cultures therein. There seems to be no reason why they wouldn’t be invited apart from an oversight - is there?
The event is billed as “NEHTA is convening a summit” with Peak Bodies in the healthcare sector to discuss the introduction of 'the' Individual Electronic Health Record for all Australians.
ReplyDeleteThe media is invited to attend. This is informative. To some degree it points to a relaunch-repositioning of NEHTA and a drive to increase consumer awareness that the time has come for every consumer to have (and therefore to demand they have) an ‘Individual’ Electronic Health Record!
Although presenters have yet to be ‘nominated’ one has to assume (if there are any) they have already been locked-in at this stage. On the other hand, if it is to be a 'discussion' with audience involvement then perhaps it will take the form of a 'gathering' focused on audience involvement and break-out sessions like the 2020 and some facilitators to stimulate audience discussion complemented by some media handouts to ensure wide ‘publicity’.
For success, I believe anything that claims to be a summit needs to be inclusive of the WHOLE sector not just a selected few.
ReplyDeleteOn that criteria this is a poor start - especially considering what the summit is meant to address and how little an interest many of the invited entities have shown so far in the area.
David
How deeply involved is DoHA in this ‘event’? I seem to recall a media report post Budget indicating that NEHTA will be required to report directly to department officials.
ReplyDeleteThe Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists won't be needed but the Hand Surgeons might.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteThe message I get is: "We're the health IT experts, and we want to talk to the health service provision experts.
Organisations involved in past or current health IT development need not apply, as we've made you all redundant."
Clearly they see THEIR future IT developments will be a clean slate, unencumbered by the mistakes of the past.
I suspect they'll have a lot more trouble from the providers than they expect, however.
I am sure there is more than a tad of hubris in their approach - and that they will surely regret it.
ReplyDeleteTheir lack of actually delivering anything very useful to date only confirms that view.
David.
I think everyone has missed the fundamental point. The basic message is "we are in control, we provide the funds, we will remain in control and we will decide what should and what should not be done and when." This is nothing more and nothing less than our recently departed Great Leader's approach.
ReplyDelete