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."

Sunday, May 28, 2017

AusHealthIT Poll Number 372 – Results – 28th May, 2017.

Here are the results of the poll.

Do You Believe The myHR System Is Already Technically Obsolete?

Yes 95% (167)

No 5% (8)

I Have No Idea 0% (0)

Total votes: 175

The numbers speak for themselves – the myHR is an obsolete clunker!

A really great turnout of votes!

Again, many, many thanks to all those that voted!

David.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It’s not just the quality of data security, or the privacy settings that needs to be thought about although these are equally important. What seems to have been slowly removed from the conversation is the quality of the data itself. This is the component that will chase the most harm, harm to health professionals as the GovHR exposes inequalities in data entry, this will directly harm the relationships between Government and Organisations like AMA, RACGP, Pharmacy groups and consumer groups, we do not have a clear line of the ADHA boards taking responsibility, nor and possibly more importantly the ADHA CEO and various boards and committees being held to account. When there is a breakdown in other sectors like aviation, banking, justice system or other public safety areas an independent investigation takes place, there is total openness, honesty and transparency as it should be.

There is slant evidence that the ADHA or their Department masters have a culture of openness and transparency, I am sure they have the posters and little change agents, but evidence is clear that even what is found under the board papers is declining in volume and insight, what is there is more …. Well best not provide my critique.

Who is conning who? It's seems deception and mistrust is everywhere, when talking to citizens, organisations and clearly within and to themselves.

In my personal and honest experience the quality of care provided by the Australian healthcare system (yes I have experienced care in 4 continents) is second to none but HIT is still maturing and Government driven IT (including people’s health data) is in a dreadful mess.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

Anon, 9:05am Re; "What seems to have been slowly removed from the conversation is the quality of the data itself. "

Not on this blog; it's been a recurrent theme.

And to expand the theme, who is responsible for the quality of the data?

Who can be sued for errors, omissions, inconsistencies and all the other potential data quality matters?

And when it comes to data quality, good organisation is an important part.

Did you know, for instance, that medication data can appear in many, many different places in a MyHR?

There is a section under Documents called Medicines where it says:
"This is a list of medicines that have been prescribed and dispensed"

Mine contains two prescriptions. There is no data for First Dispense, Last Dispense, Dispensed - it says "unavailable"

When I go to my "Medicare Overview" there is a section called "Prescription information - PBS & RPBS" which has 6 pages of prescription data, including Prescribed data and Supplied Dates.

A Shared Health Summary has a section for Medication.

A Personal Health Summary has a section for Medication.

A pharmacist (any and multiple pharmacists) can upload Event Summaries with prescription information.

During a hospital visit, you could be given medication which may or may not appear in a Discharge Summary and/or your PBS data. You might also be given medication to take home.

Your dentist could prescribe (or even give, without a prescription) medication and upload an Event Summary.

The myhealthrecord.gov.au website under
"Managing your My Health Record", it says
"Your My Health Record could contain:
Medicines you are taking prescribed by your doctor"

Yet another untruth. A MyHR could contain medicines prescribed by anyone not just by your doctor and in a form that is very difficult to navigate and discover.

Too much data, especially contradictory and inconsistent data is worse than useless it is dangerous.

Could a patient sue the government if all this disorganisation ever led to bad health outcomes?

Anonymous said...

The Agency has guidelines for data quality, we cannot be held responsible for the quality of information sent and the outcome resulting from a third party use of that information. The quality and use is determined by sender and receiver, although the My Health Record now stores all the information and the sender no longer needs to know by who or why the information is being pulled down. This simply highlights the consequences of interoperability. There are enough data standards and data quality guidelines. People simply need to adopt these and spend more time to ensure these standards and guidelines are adhered to. What is missing is a strategic interoperability framework with the Citizen at its centre.

Again minor issues that can be worked through, we must first centralise the collection and storage of health information and remove that fax machine once and for all.

BG

Anonymous said...

9:05am what is found under the board papers is declining in volume and insight.

Having now read the April paper it is clear that what other have been raising regarding the structural and basic business standards in the ADHA might well be true and more serious than I had imagined. To blame previous entities and a central Government department for organisational failures is very telling, either the CEO has no clue how to build and organisation or the General Manager responsible for the ADHA operations is lacking in the most basic skills and ability.

There is some very serious questions to be asked here, just what is going on inside the Agency? It is not looking good and hardly representative of an organisation ready to undertake such a large national change initiative such as Opt-out.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

BG,

Have I got this right? The agency takes no responsibility for the data sent to MYHR or for its use?

Does the agency take any responsibility for organising the data so that it is not confusing, it is easy to find, and has data integrity?

Is there a single screen that shows all a patient's medicine/prescriptions?

What does "the My Health Record now stores all the information" mean?

In reality, is the only benefit from MyHR in its role in interoperability?

In which case why does MyHR need to store any data, beyond a reasonable time during which a document can be downloaded. Rather like a store and forward messaging system.

If so, there are far cheaper and more reliable ways of doing this.

And assuming the government has washed its hands of any data quality problems, can a GP or other Healthcare professional be sued for negligence if they don't ensure data quality? The government website seems to imply this, but I don't know what the legal situation is.

Anonymous said...

Bernard - Not on this blog; it's been a recurrent theme. Yes you are correct, my apologies to David, you and the community that forms around this blog. My comment was reflective of those proposing to be leaders in eHealth not those who should be listened to. I don't understand why the ADHA does not engage openly in these debates, there is clear evidence of common ground and common goals.

Anonymous said...

BG - why would we need a strategic framework for interoperability? Surely that is woven throughout the National strategy, if its aim is not open interoperability across healthcare then why is being created? There are also decent frameworks in place. Interoperability is more than just intergration. The rest I will leave for Bernard's questions to be answered.

Anonymous said...

Apart from a database of useless information, what did NEHTA do for all those years?

Anonymous said...

10:08 PM that Database of useless information was from DOHA, it was housed partly under NEHTA but set up as a seperate budget and business much the same as the Opt out will become. During that period all point to point, standards, secure messaging, diagnostic etc.. were slowed to a crawl, stopped or so utterly polluted the ground they once thrived on is no longer capable of supporting life.

So what has the ADHA done? Nothing new and nothing innovative or transformational. It is though setting you up to have you health information flogged of under the quids of open data, but only to those with open wallets. Well in an ideal world, but of late governments seem happy to give away resources and information with little foresight and understanding