The following appeared almost two years ago and somehow popped up as news on the weekend
Australia e-health system in the mill
The standards and foundations for nation-wide e-health solutions in Australia have now mainly been completed, according to Peter Fleming, Chief Executive Officer of National E-Health Transition Authority(NEHTA), leaving implementation on the agenda for 2009.
NEHTA has been given an “absolute mandate” from the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to create a uniform IT infrastructure and deliver individual healthcare identifiers (which link electronic medical records together).
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“Legislative changes are needed, but from a technical perspective we aim to be in a position this year to run some pilots,” Fleming said. “We’re in very close dialogue with a number of groups about trials of electronic medication management and hospital discharge summaries.”
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NEHTA has also been working closely with CIOs from state and territorial governments. The states had the “absolute intent” of following NEHTA standards with any projects they conducted, said Fleming.
Full article here:
http://www.futuregov.asia/articles/2009/jan/28/australia-e-health-system-mill/
This just shows that sometimes what you are told by the present collection of federal of e-Health spokesmen needs to be taken with a ‘grain of salt’. Implementation has not really happened in any practical sense, medication management and e-discharge summaries are hardly going great guns, if at all, essentially two years and how many millions of dollars later.
Out of their own mouths we just have huffing and puffing, Annual Reports saying it is all fabulous but just exactly where has a live practical effective system been delivered? Let me know if you know!
Rule Number One of any competent management is to under promise and over deliver. This lot are masters of doing the reverse!
I suggest people listen closely to what is said and apply great scepticism to what they hear.
David.
Mr Fleming is only being paid $1.3 million a year so you can't expect too much David. That's small change for a banking CEO so considering the low pay he is being offered you need to be a little more considerate and grateful for his efforts!
ReplyDeleteI was in Milan at an IFHRO meeting where 2 presenters from Australia stated in thier presentations that we whould havea nationwide PCHR by the end of 2011. In Question time I asked "do you really believe this statement?". From the audience I was immediately challenged by another Australian voice who loudly declared "our health minister has all the plans in place for this to occur and the plan is on schedule!" Terry Hannan
ReplyDeleteI would refer those people Terry mentions to David's comment about the lack of significant systems implemented to date. How can we have any sort of EHR when there is a complete dearth of EMR implementations which have any meaningful usage? You need an EMR to feed an EHR. How much money has been spent over the last 20 years or so with so little to show?
ReplyDeletecheers,
Paul.