Here are the results of the poll.
Do Medicare Locals Make A Valuable Contribution To E-Health In Australia?
Yes - They Really Help With Important Initiatives 50% (60)
Probably 13% (15)
Neutral 7% (8)
Probably Not 2% (2)
No - They Are Ineffective In Supporting The Really Valuable Initiatives 21% (25)
I Have No Idea 8% (9)
Total votes: 119
Very interesting - high participation coming later in the week with a swing in the view expressed. Looks like someone alerted some of the MLs about the poll so they could vote.
Final outcome 63% MLs good for E-Health and 23% not so good with 15% being on the fence.
Again, many thanks to all those that voted!
David.
I do not work for a Medicare Local, but in a health service that works with them (and their previous incarnations - the Divisions of General Practice). My experience is that they have worked very hard to support ehealth initiatives across the acute/community/aged care gaps. For e.g., the PCEHR is just one initiative that have been tasked with, and from what I can see, the poor old Medicare Locals tried their best to support GPs in registering their practices and staff using the complex and confusing mechanisms that had been established in a rush by the Dept of Health and DHS. It is not the fault of Medicare Local staff that they had such a mess to try and implement. They probably worked miracles to do what they did, and I bet they have tried to feed back suggestions to have the whole thing improved. I hope the feds have listened to them. A lot of what Medicare Locals do is behind the scenes and thankless, such as encouraging data quality improvements for GP systems. I would not like to see them go...
ReplyDeleteI think there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that in many instances Medicare Local staff have worked very hard to support eHealth initiatives across the acute/community/aged care gaps.
ReplyDeleteClearly they have been hampered in their efforts by too much money being available in the hands of the bureaucracy above and this has been compounded by lack of informed strategic leadership; leaving the ML staff to wrestle with implementing the Department’s bidding according to the Department’s rules.
In the process the ML staff have been led by the blind into deeply troubled waters.
In their naivety, and perhaps for fear of losing their jobs, they have done what they have been told to do; in effect they never had a chance of succeeding or delivering anything much of value. History has repeatedly shown that feedback, no matter how sensible or credible, has never been heeded probably because no-one in the bureaucracy knew how to interpret the feedback, make an intelligent judgmental decision on the merits of the feedback and put in train the action required to effectively act on the feedback..
But the most destructive and critical issues lay in the fact that these poor misguided people in the MLs had been given the task of selling something which did not work and could not be proven to work.
Their sales pitch was based on the immediate benefits, yet the immediate benefits were not apparent and most busy, time poor, intelligent customers (the doctors) quickly appreciated they were being sold something which lacked compelling demonstrable substance.
By comparison there was no problem selling the long term benefits such as - the PCEHR:
• enables information sharing
• facilitates collaboration between health professionals
• permits authorised access to a person’s health record from anywhere
• replaces the manual paper record
• enhances f2f communication between doctor and patient
BUT so what?
If the immediate benefits are not apparent, demonstrable and readily available then no amount of selling long term benefits will make one iota of difference. Therein lies the problem and the core of the problem ripples from the top of the bureaucracy all the way down to the field level – failure to understand the problem, the market and the customer.
Has the Good Doctor undermined any credibility he has, by dismissing the poll as being skewed because of Medical Local professionals responding to it?
ReplyDeleteWhat is the point in polling the readership if you are only going to agree with the results when they reaffirm your own opinion??
I come to this site for breaking news and the excellent array of international links and stories, not pseudo journalism and bunk social science.
Sorry,
ReplyDeleteYou were not watching as the poll was responded to during the week.
The outcome was clearly the other way until Friday and then swung around. I felt it was worth mentioning.
Your mileage may vary!
David.