Here Is An Admission That DoHA and NEHTA Are Really Clueless. They Now Realise They Have Messed Up Big-Time.

The following appeared today.

Health department reversal on PCEHR liability

12th Apr 2012

Mark O’Brien

The health department will rewrite the “unfair” conditions of registration for the personally controlled e-health records (PCEHR) system which required practices to assume all liability and grant unrestricted access to premises and records.

The draft conditions were panned by health insurers and industry experts after MO last week broke the news that the AMA had warned the health department that the “unfair” requirements would “deter every medical practice in Australia from participating”.

MDA National president Associate Professor Julian Rait said any lawyer would say the condition requiring access to a practice’s premises, IT systems, records and staff was “a dealbreaker”.

Professor Rait said the Medical Indemnity Industry Association of Australia, of which MDA National is a member, had provided feedback to the department on the draft conditions and said the association “would not advise doctors to participate with such onerous conditions”.

“[The condition granting access to premises and records] causes particular concern because it is analogous to a search and seizure type clause,” he said.

“We would say it would be foolhardy of practitioners to agree to a condition like that.”

RACGP e-health spokesperson Mike Civil said while he and many other GPs were very supportive of the PCEHR concept he was “very disappointed” by the way the system rollout had been handled so far.

More here:

http://www.medicalobserver.com.au/news/health-department-reversal-on-pcehr-liability

So what we have here is the RACGP - who accepts NEHTA funding - saying there are aspects of all this that just unacceptable nonsense and sent the Government running back to the drawing board.

If NEHTA and DoHA had actually bothered to actually consult they would have noticed just how idiotic these regulations were in a range of aspects.

It you want to know what the peak Health Informatics Group thinks of these regulations you can grab a copy of their April 2012 submission on rules and regulations here:

http://www.achi.org.au/docs/ACHI_Response_Proposals_for_Regulations_and_Rules.pdf

I hardly think the planners got even 5 out of 10 here. This is all because of a lack of leadership and governance on the part of NEHTA and DoHA. They just refuse to listen to those who actually have at least a few clues!

David.