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."

Sunday, September 02, 2012

This Really Is An Amazing Way To Run A Clinical System. Clearly The NEHRS System Is Not Intended To Ever Be Used In For Real.

At least a few readers will recall this blog a few weeks ago.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Oh No! Not Again! Here Is What Happened Just Now With The NEHRS. 10:15pm Aug 15, 2012

Just logged in.
Got to the main record screen and guess what? Here is what I got.

Error Details:

An error has occurred processing your request.
Worse the records I had entered have gone:
I had recorded allergies and current medications. 4 serious allergies and six medications I am on. Here is what I got.

Allergies and Adverse Reactions

You can enter substances to which you have known allergies and/or the reactions that occur when you come into contact with the substance.
Click “Edit” to update your Summary. All healthcare professionals who have access to this eHealth Record will be able to see this information. No Restricted Settings can be placed on this Summary.
You are encouraged to keep your Personal Health Summary current to ensure it is valuable to healthcare professionals involved in your care
Note: Your healthcare professionals are not obliged to review your summary. You should visit your healthcare professional to discuss changes in your health or any important concerns you may have.
No Allergies and Adverse Reactions associated with this record.
-----
The full blog is found here:
It later emerged that I had just wandered in when the system was being maintained but that there had been no warning that the system was down.
At least it seems someone is reading the comments on the blog. Today - about 9:30am - I thought I would have a browse to see if there were more recent records available than those from May.
Here is what I found when I asked to enter from www.ehealth.gov.au

Service availability

  • Home
  • Service availability
This page identifies scheduled outages to the eHealth record system.

Notification of planned outage

Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record system downtime scheduled for 11:00am Saturday 1 September 2012.

The system will be unavailable for a period of approximately 24 hours. During this time, maintenance to the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record System and Australia.gov.au will be performed.
We apologise for any inconvenience. Contact the eHealth helpline on 1800 723 471 for assistance during this period.
---- End extract.
Then I thought I would go direct via www.australia.gov.au and obviously things are much better organised even from here:

This service is temporarily unavailable

Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record system downtime scheduled for 11:00am Saturday 1 September 2012.
The system will be unavailable for a period of approximately 24 hours. During this time, maintenance to the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record System and Australia.gov.au will be performed. We apologise for any inconvenience. Contact the eHealth helpline on 1800 723 471 for assistance during this period.
----- End extract.
This is of course just after we have been told that it is all hunky dory and implemented.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

It Seems That The NEHRS System Infrastructure Is Now All Complete And Operational. Wow!

The following appeared today:

PCEHR infrastructure finished

The national infrastructure for the PCEHR has been completed, with the final components allowing doctors to upload and view ehealth records.
Other pieces completed include the healthcare provider portal, and healthcare provider PCEHR registration.
More here:
The full blog is here:
Really what we have here is a fake clinical system that no-one can rely on to be there when you need it and which has so grossly underdone despite the claims of all the DoHA spinners to the contrary.
I have to admit I am amazed just how hopeless this is all is. One really would have thought you could do maintenance when in the wee small hours and not just turn off the system for a day. Talk about a total lack of planning, clinical understanding and technical competence.
David.
Postscript: The system is still not up at 3:45pm on Sunday, Sept 2, 2012.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi David, happy to see you spotted this, is it just me or is 48 Hours one mighty maintenace window. I hope the untook a better approach to testing than we had to put up with, I guess a million a day just does not buy professional testing. Below is from a few weeks ago, I do not know if they took the same approach this time

Dear colleagues
This weekend is another exciting step forward for the PCEHR. We will be launching the PCEHR capabilities for providers and consumers to view their Medicare information. We would like people to volunteer to participate as “friends and family” to be the first people to view your Medicare data. In particular people who have:
• lots of Medicare (MBS / PBS) items; and/or
• volunteered as an organ donor on the organ donor register; and / or
• children with immunisations.
Over the weekend there will be a number of migration steps. We want to make sure that before the general public are using the system, we have detected and corrected any unforseen issues that may arise when we move our fully tested code into production.
The key steps over the weekend:
1. Backup of the system and migration of the new capabilities
2. Load business verification testers and friends and family Medicare data
3. Testing onsite with Accenture (business verification testing before the system is turned on. The Accenture site is behind a “white list” firewall restricting access)
4. Removing the “white list” to allow access to the PCEHR system for the general public
5. Friends and family system confirmation
6. Loading of the general public’s Medicare data
Step five is similar to what was done during the July release. After steps one-three are completed, we will lift the “white list” so that access to the PCEHR system is available to the general public, but only those who have signed up to friends and family will have their medicare data loaded. When this occurs, we would like staff, their friends and family to log into their PCEHR’s to view their Medicare data. The friends and family stage will occur sometime between 13.00 – 19.00 on Saturday and 9.00 – 19.00 on Sunday. The timings depend on the issues with deployment that we may detect as we complete the migration.
In order to participate, we need people to email to PCEHRgolive@nehta.gov.au :
1. Your mobile phone number
2. Your IHI. (You can obtain your IHI by logging onto your PCEHR).
3. Your full name, Date of Birth and Medicare card number
4. The times you are available to participate
5. You need to elect to have your Medicare data available in your PCEHR before Friday, 5pm
When we are ready to lift the white list we will SMS you. We would ask that you complete the views of your PCHER, focusing on your Medicare data. Once you have completed the view, please email to PCEHRgolive@nehta.gov.au with the subject: Success if you had no issues. If you have issues, include the subject: Issues. In the email please include screen shots of the issue, and your contact details so we can follow-up. Please note that the golive team will view your personal information contained in these screen shots.
Thank you for helping
Andrew Howard
Head of PCEHR
nehta - National E-Health Transition Authority Level 25, 56 Pitt Street SYDNEY NSW 2000

Paul Fitzgerald said...

they were asking people to email their personal details? - enough to steal a pretty comprehensive ID I would think! this is wrong in so many ways from a privacy security point of view...

Anonymous said...

It's called live testing! It's cheap and cheerful, and because it uses real data from real people, it finds real problems.

NK said...

Is this legal?

"A person commits an offence if a healthcare identifier is disclosed to the person; and the person uses or discloses it".. unless said use or disclosure is authorised by the act.

I search in vain for this as an authorised use. Is NEHTA a registered service provider?

Anonymous said...

So now we know where the few thousand registered consumers to date have come from - "friends and family" volunteers (for want of a better word) it seems!

Are they for real?

Anonymous said...

Your IHI. (You can obtain your IHI by logging onto your PCEHR) ???

Anonymous said...

The Prime Minister should be demanding closer scrutiny of NEHTA and the PCEHR profligacy.

JULIA Gillard has ordered an open-ended search for savings to close a widening gap in the federal budget as Labor struggles to fund new promises costing tens of billions of dollars.

Anonymous said...

Well the saving made by trashing Nehta and the PCEHR would be greater than the ongoing costs as this program, if continued is going to fail in a very expensive way. It is also damaging the existing Health IT providers. Scrap it and reap the rewards I say!

Anonymous said...

Is there anymore evidence required from the very first post that the inmates are running the asylum?

No doubt there will be one all mighty NEHTA commissioned witch-hunt to track down the rogue operator who's conscience has got the better of them and decided to share the inner unadulterated incompetence with the wider ehealth interested public.

ALL NEHTA EMPLOYEES, DELETE aushealthit.blogspot.com.au from your browser histories post haste or expect the inquisition at your desk in the very near future.

What a tax payer funded shame. Close this ongoing ehealth largesse down, give the funds back to the treasuries with strict instructions the funds are to be proportionally rebated to the tax payers, ideally with an 11% supplemental damages fee added on top for the wanton waste of tax payers funds criminally mismanaged by the Health bureaucracies and associated QANGOS.