The following
article appeared today.
E-health blueprint needs 'fine tuning': Industry
The finalised
Concept of Operations document still lacks answers to all the issues raised by
the RACGP, according to the organisation
- Chloe Herrick (Computerworld)
- 14 September, 2011 10:10
The Federal
Government’s finalised Concept of Operations on its $466.7 million Personally
Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) project still needs “fine tuning”,
according to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP).
The document (PDF), released
earlier this week, finalised details put forward in the draft report issued
in April this year.
RACGP
National Standing Committee on e-health chairperson, Dr John Bennett, said
despite the document failing to address all the issues
previously raised by the college, it was important that stakeholders “join
forces” to ensure the rollout is completed by July 2012.
“The RACGP is pleased that the final plan for
the PCEHR has been released and whilst not all our previously raised issues
have been addressed, it is important that Australia gets underway with the
implementation of the PCEHR,” Bennet said in a statement.
“The
Government’s final PCEHR plan has taken on board most of the RACGP’s concerns
that were in our response to the draft plan, including our recommendation that
emergency access will be provided to the full record where required, and that
this is supported by a full audit trail so patients can see who has accessed
their record.”
However the
college did raise concerns that the current plan still lacks any incentives for
GPs and urged the government to consider how the extra effort required by GPs
will be acknowledged.
“We would
like to see amendments to the Medicare Benefits Schedule to recognise the
additional workload GPs will undertake in consultations initiating and
maintaining the patient’s shared health summary and other elements of the
PCEHR.”
More here:
The problems
with this comment - “it was important that stakeholders “join forces” to ensure
the rollout is completed by July 2012” are at least threefold.
First we know
for certain the PCEHR system will be in no way finished or complete by 2012.
Second why
would a leading clinical college say well this is really much less than we
wanted but we will just wear it. I am sure that is hardly the leadership their
members are hoping for from the RACGP. I wonder how much of the RACGP’s acquiescence
is because of the sponsorship relationship between NEHTA and the College.
Third just
why should a learned college accept a deeply second best:
In their
submission they said there were issues in the following areas:
2. Key issues
The
RACGP would like to focus our response on the following aspects of the PCEHR
Concept of Operations:
1. Data
quality
2. Role of
the nominated provider
3. Workload
for general practices
4. Privacy
and confidentiality
5.
Terminology used within the PCEHR
6. Complexity
of the PCEHR design
7. Change and
adoption/support
8. Funding
It is clear
the College is just one of many stakeholders who have not seen even the
majority of their issues addressed - data quality is a real biggie they can’t
be at all happy with!
Just why we
all have to have a system with so many flaws just eludes me and to say ‘it’s
not much good but we have to go with it” is just nonsense.
Mad stuff!
David.
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