This slide is being used by NEHTA in some of their more recent presentations.
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The PCEHR system
is: opt in
is not: compulsory
is: an enhancement to medical treatment
is not: a requirement for medical treatment
is: a source of selected clinical data and documents
is not: a substitute for normal clinical records
is: a source of information to assist enquiry
is not: a replacement for normal sharing of information between an individual and their healthcare provider
is: aligned with current privacy obligations
is not: immune to current sharing and reporting rights and obligations of providers
is: a distributed system of service providers working together
is not: a single government store of personal information
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What on earth is going on here? We are paying ½ a billion dollars for a system which does not actually assist providers as far as anyone knows, is incomplete, no one has to use and so it goes on.
Why is it there has never been a public cost/benefit assessment of the NEHRS proposal?
Why is it that it is so badly designed and implemented that most member of the caring professions don’t want to go anywhere near it without ‘danger money’?
These people really are off on a frolic at our expense.
David.
Yes David as you say 0.5 billion dollars on a frolic for what?
ReplyDeleteAnd also:
Is: a blue-sky-pie-in-the-eye vision
Is not: working, is not developed and is not of any use to anyone.
Please ask NEHTA to add those points in the slide show.
David,
ReplyDeleteI'd like to add:
is: to be understood and controlled by the individual, who is also responsible for identifying and correcting errors.
is not: controllable to the extent that access can be denied to particular users or types of user.
is: an IT system designed by IT people and built by IT people.
is not: a health information system designed by, and to meet the needs of, the individual and their health practitioners.
David,
ReplyDeleteIn support of better IT solutions, the Australian health care system has an urgent need for:
1) a consistent numbering system for patients, organisations, practitioners
2) consistency of medical terminology
3) a standardised way of moving data between systems and locations
4) a mechanism for accrediting users of these standards.
Given these foundational components, everything else could be worked out by the private sector, which makes the very existence of NASH, for example, a total waste of time and money.
Money is poured into the EHR because it is the type of big-bang item that politicians can understand, particularly those who are enamoured of centralised control. It was much easier for the mandarins at DOHA/NEHTA to convince the pollies to stump up money for an EHR than to focus on those areas like secure messaging and terminology that would actually foster decentralisation instead of working against it.
The EHR funding gives the NEHTA apparatchicks a stream of cash with which to finance a myriad of little bureaucratic empires, while enjoying benign acquiescence from the pollies regarding their inability to deliver within the promised time frames. That acquiescence is now manifesting in the private sector too, as private companies who are gorging at the trough of DOHA money have muted the howling criticisms they made between 2005 and 2010.