NEHTA Is Wanting To Sign Up Private Hospitals To Use The PCEHR. You Have To Wonder How and If This Will Work.

This appeared from NEHTA on Friday November 21, 1014.

Invitation to Apply

Private Hospital PCEHR Rapid Integration Programme

Applications are invited from private hospital organisations seeking a funding contribution to support their deployment of a Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) viewing and/or clinical document upload capability within their hospital facilities by 30 June 2015.

Viewing the PCEHR will allow hospital clinicians to directly view a consenting patient’s important health information where available from primary and community care settings – in particular, the patient’s Shared Health Summary, prescriptions and community pharmacy dispense records, public hospital discharge summaries and additional clinical documents as they are added to the PCEHR in the future (e.g. pathology and diagnostic imaging reports).

Knowing that such documents are being viewed within acute settings will further encourage the creation of these documents within the primary and community care settings.

Additionally, private hospital organisations uploading relevant clinical documents – such as discharge summaries or medication records for example - to the PCEHR system will encourage further meaningful use of the system.

The ability to view a patient’s PCEHR and upload clinical documents to it is already in place in over 260 public hospitals and health centres across Australia. As a result, there is a high degree of understanding of what is required for a successful PCEHR implementation in a hospital setting, as well as a range of implementation support offerings which are available from NEHTA to private hospitals to help ensure successful deployment occurs.

As part of NEHTA’s funding arrangements with the Commonwealth Department of Health, a total funding pool of up to $500,000 (ex GST) is available for the programme.  These funds are intended to assist private hospital organisations accelerate their eHealth readiness, and are not intended to cover the entirety of eHealth implementation costs.

NEHTA is holding an information webinar for prospective applicants:

• Tuesday 2 December 12 pm – 1.30 pm AUS Eastern Daylight Time

To confirm your interest in attending this webinar, please RSVP to privatehospital.rip@nehta.gov.au by cob Monday 1 December.  You will then be sent a webinar invitation.

To ensure you receive any future information on the Invitation to Apply straight to your email inbox we encourage all prospective applicants to register their interest via privatehospital.rip@nehta.gov.au

• Statement of Requirements PDF (358.51 kB)
• Recommended Applicant Prerequisites PDF (227.82 kB) 
• Support for Implementers PDF (259.87 kB)
• Application Form PDF (327.73 kB)

Funding applications must be lodged by midnight AUS Eastern Daylight Time on 19 December 2014 to privatehospital.rip@nehta.gov.au. 

Enquiries can be directed to privatehospital.rip@nehta.gov.au

Here is the link:

http://www.nehta.gov.au/about-us/tenders-and-offers

Reading the documentation NEHTA is clearly hoping Ramsay Health Care, Healthscope and a few of the smaller operators will be able to be given between $50,000 to $150,000 (max) to modify their systems to be able to access and view (with consent) an individual’s PCEHR.

They make it clear that the funds will not cover all the costs involved.

NEHTA claims great expertise in what us needed having done similar work in 260 public hospitals but the evidence that this capability is actually being used is very hard to come by.

Additionally the Private Sector and Public Sector use of IT is very different as is the makeup of the clinician workforce (many much more senior and doing most of the work themselves without junior staff.)

This means the usage of clinical systems is much lower in the sector as it is among specialists compared with GPs.

I am sure the Private Hospital Operators understand these dynamics, are are very cost benefit conscious and so will make very hard-nosed decisions as to seek the funding. Will be very interesting to see what happens!

David.