Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Monday, September 17, 2012

A Totally Unrealistic Email Came Out from NEHTA Last Week. I Will Be Amazed If All This Actually Happens!

This little ripper was circulated last week.
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 2:23 PM
Subject: PIP eHealth Incentive - Pre-release webinar for the Medical Software Vendor Community - Slide pack
Dear all,
Thank you for joining our Practice Incentives Program eHealth Incentive - Pre-release webinar for the Medical Software Vendor Community.
The slide pack from yesterday’s discussion is enclosed for your review and distribution as appropriate. Please note that this document will also be posted on the NEHTA website.
As a recap, the key messages are:
-      The PIP eHealth incentive, announced in the 2012-13 budget, aims to encourage general practices to keep up to date with the latest developments in eHealth
-      The five requirements and associated compliance dates are:
o   1. Integrating Healthcare Identifiers into Electronic Practice Records - February 2013
o   2. Secure Messaging Capability - February 2013
o   3. Data Records and Clinical Coding - February 2013
o   4. Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions - February 2013
o   5. Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records - May 2013
-    The PIP eHealth Product Register is intended for Practices to check if they have compliant software
-    More information will follow shortly on how vendors can list their products on the PIP eHealth Product Register. In the meantime we encourage you to peruse the information enclosed in the slide pack.
Please do not hesitate to contact Industry@nehta.gov.au if you require further assistance.
Thank you.
NEHTA Industry Communications
----- End E-Mail.
So what we have from those people who could not deliver the National Authentication System for Health after 5 years of trying demands that - for apparently no money - suddenly all this NEHTA compliance is to appear out of thin air is slightly over six months.
Of course we know the IHI service is hardly fit for purpose and that no-one is relying on it as the sole identifier.
More amazing still there are no standards for Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions so the vendor systems has to be able to use a commercial non-NEHTA non-standard compliant provider!
Equally it is totally unclear just what coding is to be used - and on the relevant slide SNOMED is not even mentioned.
I have no idea how all this is going to play out but my suggestion would be for the system providers to say to the GPs who want to claim the very substantial payments (up to $50,000 per practice) for software compliance that the costs of our software will be ½ of the PIP payment you can claim until such time as our development costs are re-couped.
I can’t see anywhere where the same demands for compliance are being placed on the State Jurisdictions for their computer systems - or have I missed the announcement.
You can download the amazing document from here:
The NEHRS can be months late but it seems the private sector has to fit in with nonsense deadlines and work through the holiday period in January to boot.
David.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The second last slide sums it all up:
Where to from here?

Anonymous said...

So typical, they have let to prove that any of this works, or is workable in practice but they are getting out the stick to beat people into buying into their pipe dream. What happens when it turns out to be a nightmare??

Why not mandate compliance with existing V2 standards that are proven to work??

These people are spoilt brats and are now trying to force buy in. If people are not buying in without the stick there could be a good reason. Perhaps we will also have to join the flat earth society?

John Frost said...

David,
while I philosophically completely agree with your comments this has simply become a reality of being in the GP Software business. The vendors are wedged between Govt mandated GP behaviour and our GP customers. Not surprisingly GPs don't want to pay more for these mandates by Govt and frankly I have sympathy for their position. So as a vendor we try to simply get on with it. As soon as Nehta release the details (and they haven't yet) we'll start work on any gaps compared to what we've already done in anticipation and put other things on the back burner - just another day at the office. On the upside, getting some of these bits and pieces working in practice will, I hope, in time, improve outcomes. We remain ever optimistic....

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

John,

The fact that there is a government policy induced wedge - put in place by people who don't know what they are doing in my view - is the problem as far as I am concerned.

This is interference in what should be a free market by unelected bureaucrats with a dreadful record of successful policy delivery.

All pretty sad - and I believe ultimately destructive!

David.