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, November 11, 2013

The PCEHR Enquiry Is Planning To Exclude The Public From Comment. Bad Early Signs.

I just found this:

Electronic Health Records Review Panel to Consult with Key Stakeholders

Department of Health
8/11/2013 1:51:00 PM
8 November 2013
Electronic Health Records Review Panel to consult with key stakeholders 
The Review into the operations of the troubled electronic health records scheme, commissioned by the Federal Minister for Health, the Hon Peter Dutton, met this week to determine its operating procedures.
Panel Chair, Richard Royle, said today that, due to the urgency of developing recommendations to improve the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records (PCEHR) scheme, the Panel had decided to initially invite written submissions from those 210 organisations which have previously submitted to consultation on the PCEHR.
“In addition the Panel will have more detailed meetings with a number of key stakeholders to assist the Panel to gain the views of those people most closely involved with the system,” Mr Royle said. “These stakeholders will include IT, clinical, and consumer representatives.”
Review Terms of Reference
The panel will conduct a Review into the personally controlled electronic health record system dealing with implementation, uptake and including, but not limited to the following:
  •          The gaps between the expectations of users and what has been delivered
  •          The level of consultation with end users during the development phase
  •          The level of use of the PCEHR by health care professions in clinical settings
  •          Barriers to increasing usage in clinical settings
  •          Key clinician and patient usability issues
  •          Work that is still required including new functions that improve the value proposition for clinicians and patients
  •          Drivers and incentives to increase usage for both industry and health care professionals
  •          The applicability and potential integration of comparable private sector products
  •          The future role of the private sector in providing solutions
  •          The policy settings required to generate private sector solutions
Media contact: 02 6289 7400 
The release is here:
Interesting that the Ministerial announcement found here talked of Public Submissions:
See here:
To quote:
“The Review panel will invite submissions from the public along with key stakeholder groups including peak clinical bodies. The Review will report back to Minister Dutton by mid-December 2013 after which the government will consider the recommendations and respond.”
Seems they have already realised they have bitten off a good deal more than can be chewed in a few short weeks.
Again we see politics messing with a major Health IT Project. Will they never learn?
Also apparently the panel are going for the fix it option - so we now know outcome is preset since they are saying this absent submissions.
“Speaking at the HITWA 2013 conference in Perth on Friday, the lead of the PCEHR Inquiry, Richard Royle, made it clear that the desire of the inquiry is not to 'kill off' the PCEHR, but to ensure the system is a useful and workable clinical tool. 
Royle said the PCEHR is a genuine opportunity to set up a system that can help all Australians with their healthcare.  Usability and implementation issues need to be addressed to ensure clinicians have confidence in the information that is held in the system.”
From HISA link on Twitter
Really, really sad.
David.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Simple comment "The deck chairs have just been shuffled, the same old BS remains"

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a "Lipstick on a pig" approach.

Anonymous said...

We are now all refugees on the PCEHR boat, there is no turning it back.

Anonymous said...

Let us not forget HealthConnect and the manner in which it was "fixed"!

Do not be surprised to see the same play from the same playbook applied to the PCEHR.

Anonymous said...

When a building looks like its about to fall down do they convene a panel of users and owners to review the design and construction to look at ways to fix it? That would be absurd. You would bring in structural engineers and building inspectors to look at the design and construction to work out what went wrong.

Software might be virtual, but its not a matter of making sure the paperwork was in order and declaring everything is ok. You need people who have built large working software systems to determine if there is anything worth salvaging and if its fit for purpose. This skill is still a black art rather than as scientific as a construction engineer, but I am sure there is some art in good structural engineering as well.

I think we have seen the software profession, which was yet to mature, overrun by people with management degrees who are so out of their depth that anything they say will be a work of pure fiction. It seems that NASA had the same problem, so its also applicable to rocket science. Make no mistake eHealth is rocket science.

The PCEHR has been the Dilbert reality show. Is one of the panel Elbonian by chance? The odds of this panel getting to heart of the problem is so low that I hope its a snow screen for a pragmatic plan to blame this on Labor bungling (which is true to a large extent) and pulling the pin. Alas I fear this is not the case.

Anonymous said...

If they talk to same people who were involved in the first place, they will only hear excuses and the opinions of the very people who caused the problems.

It takes more smarts to fix a problem than create it. The review team hasn't got the smarts to fix anything.

As Bernard keeps saying, it's not the implementation they should be questioning, it's the whole approach.

And Dutton may have backed himself into a corner. If he really wants to kill the project, then, according to media reports, that's one thing the review isn't going to recommend.

Nothing like having your mind made up before starting an inquiry.