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."

Friday, May 27, 2016

I Hope This Is Not True But Rather A Matter Of Poor Expression Or What Is Happening.

I spotted this page the other day from the Austin Hospital in Melbourne.

My Health Record

Austin Health is participating in the My Health Record system, formerly known as the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record  (PCEHR).

Austin Health clinicians are now able to access your My Health Record.

In addition to being able to view your record, all inpatient discharge summaries will be uploaded to your My Health Record (if a record exists).
You have the right to withdraw consent to have your discharge summary uploaded to their My Health Record.
Please let us know at your next visit if you have any concerns about this.

What is a My Health Record?

My Health Record is the new name of the national digital health record system. Having a My Health Record means your important health information like allergies, medical conditions and treatments, medicine details, test or scan reports can be digitally stored in one place.
This information can be easily and quickly accessed by participating healthcare providers when needed for your ongoing healthcare.

Will My Health Record be useful for me?

My Health Record can help you in a number of ways:
  • Keeping track of your own health history
  • Enabling other health professionals you authorise to see your key health summary so you don't have to repeat it or worry about forgetting important information, like medications. 
  • Helping you and your healthcare providers to better manage complex or chronic conditions
  • You can customise access to your My Health Record by setting access controls including restricting who can see your information, or cancel your record, at any time

For more information or to register for a My Health Record

You can find the page here:
I have to say the claim that Austin Clinicians can access your myHR is a little odd. Surely there needs to be prior consent from the patient to firstly access your record and second to add material to the patient record.
That is certainly not what is implied the way this page is worded. Either the site, the procedures or both need to be updated to reflect how myHR should be used.
David.

3 comments:

Eric Browne said...

David, the default access controls established for anyone who has ever registered for the PCEHR/myHR give permission to any provider (organisation or individual) anywhere in Australia to view or upload to the person's My Health Record. I assume, contingent on their local software) that clinicians in the Austin Hospital in Victoria can look at my father's record, although he lives in Sydney and has never had any contact with Austin Hospital.
If so, the Austin clinicians can do that despite the fact that my father is unable to look at, or control access to his own record himself.

One of the reasons that there are so many discharge summaries uploaded to the My Health Record is precisely because it is often an automated process. I suspect that most patients who have had a discharge summary uploaded from Australian public hospitals would not even be aware that that has occurred. I even suspect that many clinicians may be unaware that a discharge summary they have authored has been sent to the My Health Record.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

re: "I even suspect that many clinicians may be unaware that a discharge summary they have authored has been sent to the My Health Record."

However, they are responsible, alone, for the content. If a patient wants something changed, they have to track down the clinician and request that they modify it. The only other alternative is to remove it. Which is a bit of a sledgehammer if there is only a single, but important, error in a large discharge summary document.

It's not absolutely clear if a provider is the clinician or the organisation for who they work for. But there's a lot that isn't clear looking at the myhealthrecord.gov.au site.

Reference:
What do I do if I notice an error in my Health Record?
https://myhealthrecord.gov.au/internet/mhr/publishing.nsf/Content/find-out-more?OpenDocument&cat=Managing%20your%20My%20Health%20Record#ia8

and on the service provider part of the website
Reference:
What if there is an error in the information located in my My Health Record
https://myhealthrecord.gov.au/internet/mhr/publishing.nsf/Content/healthcare-providers-faqs?OpenDocument&cat=Using%20My%20Health%20Record#ia5

Anonymous said...

Just a quick question, what information is data mined and to whom is it shared or sold?
Signing as anonymous only because I cant sign in with any other format.