There are a lot of rumours that the Federal Budget is going to contain some additional measures in Primary and Aged Care as well as some significant funding for e-Health.
This idea is supported here:
Primary role for e-health in low-spending budget
NBN, IT skills likely to be sidelined in next Federal Budget, but Henry Tax recommendations will play some part
- James Hutchinson (Computerworld)
- 07 May, 2010 16:40
Speculation on what the Federal Government may introduce in its annual Budget on 11 May has centred on e-health.
As part of the Budget, it is believed the Government will introduce $2 billion in funding for the health sector, following the announcement of a National Health and Hospitals Network and ongoing national health reform initiatives. While e-health measures were not included in recent health reform announcements, industry bodies have speculated that electronic health initiatives are still on the agenda and may be introduced as part of the budget.
"We think there's going to be something there and we think it's going to be pretty specific on e-health, maybe patient records," Australian Computer Society (ACS) chief executive officer, Bruce Lakin, told Computerworld Australia.
More here:
I first wrote about the possibility on the blog here:
Since then I have had a slow drumbeat of snippets passed on from here and there.
I also find it hard to believe the release of the Booz report which was also mentioned on the blog was co-incidental.
See here:
My understanding is that there might be up to $400M or so dedicated to the area over the usual budget cycle of 3 to 4 years.
If this turns out to be true my key concerns will be around how the money is to be spent, what it will be spent on and who will control and manage whatever is to be done.
My list of what should and should not happen is pretty much as follows.
1. The funding should be directed to the still unaddressed areas in the National E-Health Strategy – most especially in fostering capable leadership, governance and Standards compliance of a genuinely national effort.
2. The funding should be channelled into what I like to think of as ‘e-Health Australia’ which will be a new and better managed entity to replace NEHTA.
3. The new entity should conduct a ‘root and branch’ review (maybe with the Auditor General) of what has been, and is going on, at NEHTA and develop a plan which takes forward the good things that have been happening and terminates / modifies the things that are going badly or are a waste of money. Think of it as a ‘good, more broad, more responsive, more representative, more open and better led NEHTA – with a better brief – arising from the ashes of ‘bad NEHTA’
4. I would see the key new areas to be to undertaken to be large scale regional implementations, in conjunction with the private sector and private software providers to improve clinical messaging and clinical information exchange as well as investment in fostering improvement in primary care systems and services.
5. The new effort should recognise we are past the piloting stage and should be moving to commercial, regional scale implementation of models which may ultimately form a national e-Health infrastructure – just as has been happening for the last few years in the US.
6. I would see e-Health Australia re-invigorating and re-empowering (and funding) the Standards work done by IT-14 and the connectivity and integration work being done by IHE where this makes sense.
7. I would have e-Health Australia as a real statutory entity which would have a brief to support the whole health sector to move forward in a pragmatic fashion devoid of the excessive focus on the narrow jurisdictional needs of State Health Systems.
Unless we have something like this announced I see the risks of another real waste of money looming and I am pretty sure this is the ‘last chance saloon’ we are walking into!
David.
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