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."

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Another Straw In The Wind Of A Dying Health IT Program We Know As The NEHRS / PCEHR.

The following article appeared last week.

Growing frustration with national e-health program

14th Nov 2012
CLINICIANS advising on the national e-health program say they are dissatisfied with the level of engagement by the National E-health Transition Authority (NEHTA), with MO understanding some are reconsidering their involvement.
A number of the 64 clinical leaders – listed on NEHTA’s website – approached by MO, confirmed there was growing frustration among the group.
One clinical leader, who wished to remain anonymous, said there had been a “communication blackout from NEHTA for quite some time” and that they were aware some other clinical leaders were “dissatisfied with the amount of engagement by NEHTA”.
“I’m not sure how much [the clinical leaders] are going to be engaged in the future. People are worried that they have dropped off the equation altogether… worried if e-health becomes a department of health-driven project without the [clinical input],” they said.
NEHTA’s national clinical lead, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, would not confirm reports to MO that some clinical leaders were planning to pull out of NEHTA due to frustration at not being listened to, but said retaining clinical advisers was vital to the integrity of the PCEHR.
More here:
This is a very important report in my view. If the hand selected - and pretty well paid incidentally - clinicians are starting to ‘up-stakes’ then one really has to wonder if this project has actually got any legs.
I know there was a trivial sum ($2.55M) made available for e-Health course development and some 30 e-health evangelists a short time ago from DoHA .
See here for a report:
I wonder are those leaving those who missed out on the new program - as it seems probable that with contractors being shed at NEHTA there will be less money available from that source.
As we have all noticed there has been a sudden reduction in discussion of e-Health in the media and the maintenance of the NEHTA web site has become perfunctory at best. Additionally one e-Health blogger has stopped posting much and another site has become a much more general health site.
My guess is that we are seeing the early signs of support being withdrawn for the NEHRS program and NEHTA and that the hope is no one will notice!
I note that as of today we see “No positions advertised” here:
Wind down mode if ever you saw it.
David.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

David, I think you've missed the point. The new eHealth strategy has already been announced by DOHA. Now that the 61 Medicare Locals have been established across Australia they will be DOHA's new channel for driving eHealth into place. Medicare Locals are meant to be building their own clinical lead teams at the ML level with the corollary being there is no need for NEHTA's 'clinical experts' including Mukesh. DOHA's view is that NEHTA has done its job, met its targets and delivered all outcomes required of it. NEHTA agrees with DOHA's view. So NEHTA can now go into wind down maintenance mode until it is taken back in house under DOHA's wing and the Medicare Locals can be shafted with the responsibility for enrolling providers and consumers in the PCEHR/NEHRS. If all that fails they can carry the can and blame the doctors for not cooperating. Simple really - pass the parcel to the Medicare Locals is the name of the game. It's a quick way of getting the doctors all riled up so they can be blamed along with the RACGP, AMA and the AML Alliance.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

And I thought I was cynical!

David

Anonymous said...

Poor old Medicare Locals.

But wouldn't it be good if we created a bit of competition - sort of like the league tables for immunisation that they had for the old Divisions of General Practice They could compare rates of consumers and/or numbers of clinical documents submitted by Medicare Local catchment area (excluding Medicare data documents which would skew the issue). Or while waiting for the PCHER to sort out its HI Service (and other) woes, then they could look at things like numbers of prescriptions submitted for ETP.

Trevor3130 said...

Does anyone know if the NEHR will comply with the gender categories set up by Passport office, as per these two tweets?
Here's Kate ‏@keandrews
@dfat - Your Smart Traveller app is great, but why only offer two options for gender, when Australian passports have M, F and X?
--
DFAT ‏@dfat
Thx @keandrews Our codemonkeys are working on the back end system changes to add the X to the registration pages on our website & iPhone app

Anonymous said...

NEHRS uses Nehta specifications which specify sex (not gender) and are in turn based on Australian Standards - in this case:
Health care client identification (AS 5017 2006)
For the domain values for sex, they will be specified in the standard - which is freely available from the Standard Australia site.
From memory it has values that line up with Male, Female, Indeterminate and not-specified.

Paul Karen said...

Hello David

So what happened to Charles Wright anyway? Any anonymous gossip available on his demise?

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

My view - and an opinion only. A simple paid NEHTA / DoHA hack barely worthy of the title journalist.

His behaviour since his NEHTA finding ceased would support that view.

Believe what you like but to my eye he was just a pathetic, sad, paid spruiker!

David.