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."

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

The ADHA Is Using The Primary Health Networks To Train Propagandists For Their myHR!

I noticed this a few days ago.

My Health Record in General Practice - CESPHN Ashfield

Presented by The Australian Digital Health Agency
Learning Outcomes:
  • List the features and benefits of My Health Record in general practice.
  • Describe how to communicate the benefits of the My Health Record system to patients
  • Describe the privacy and security measures taken to protect My Health Record and how to discuss privacy concerns
  • Describe how more comprehensive clinical information (access via My Health Record) can contribute to patient care.
This workshop will introduce the My Health Record system and explore its features and functionalities, and benefits and uses, as they relate to general practice.
The workshop will prepare participants to engage with the system and integrate it with their clinical workflow.
Lots more here:
I was also surprised to those who attend would need to be a paid up member of the Primary Health Network or equivalent ( ~$100) to be able to receive this ‘education’ and that the RACGP awarded Continuing Education Points for attendance!
Once you have attended you are clearly intended to become a convinced myHR evangelist and to brook no disagreement regarding the wonderfulness of the myHR.
Clearly there was to be no discussion of the possibly incomplete, possibly misleading and possibly agonizing lack of genuine work flow support offered by the myHR. There was also to be no discussion of its potential to do harm or to be almost inevitably hacked or how you should think carefully before adopting the system etc.
That such one sided unbalanced perspectives are being promoted by the ADHA should be of concern to all!
David.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

And we are ‘encouraged’ to adopt twitter and other social networks to get the messages out there. It was said that active presence on social media would be seen in a favourable light during KPI discussions with our managers.

I am in favour of MHR, but this has me wondering how true everything is that I was lead to believe.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

Have a read of these and make your own mind up re "truth"

https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/disclaimer

https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/policies/website-terms-of-use

Sorry about the repeat comment, but not everybody reads this sort of fine print.

Anonymous said...

Bernard you might be interested o learn the big rumour going about today is the minister has given the go for opt out in July and they will also implement MHR secondary Use

Anonymous said...

Fantastic news. The sooner they get opt-out into place the better. It compromises the Minister, compromises doctors and gives journalists an opportunity to give the MHR lots of coverage for the Minister to comment on.

Anonymous said...

This is to be expected, the PHN and others are paid to make this work as is the ADOHA. A fair proportion of people simply carry out the tasks they are paid to do, most will wonder off afterwards to some other job. They care about food on the table, kids and paying ever increasing bills. Some have a passion but I am afraid that is the minority. That is why this like this progress.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

Looking at the government's recent response to the Productivity Commissioner's report on Data Availability and Use, I have a question:

The government talks about something called the "national data system"? What is this? It's not defined in any of the documents.

The Productivity Commissioner makes great play of health data in his report, without fully defining the scope of health data with respect to the "national data
system".

In the PC's report on "Health data exemplifies the problem" he includes

• data from the health records of individual patients (documented reasons for visits to health professionals, the results from diagnostic testing undertaken, prescriptions received, private and public health insurance claimed)

• data collected through personally controlled devices, such as smartphones and health monitors, that have increasing potential to assist both medical practitioners and patients.

From this I conclude that the "national data system" is not limited to government data, either openly available or in its internal systems.

Could it include data someone gathers via their fitness tracker, home blood pressure meter? Will citizens be forced to register their devices and upload data to some central repository?

Maybe the My Health Record could be used for just that purpose? And that's not wild supposition, it's been suggested to me that that sort of data acquisition is on the horizon, maybe not the "forced to register" bit. Yet.

In the government's response, Minister Keenan starts his forward with

"Australia’s data is a major national resource, offering enormous opportunity for citizens, business and government to make better informed decisions and develop innovative products and services.

Unlocking data enables more targeted and effective policy development and program delivery, and increases personal choice and competition. Data-driven innovation has been estimated to add up to $64 billion per annum to the Australian economy.

The Australian Government recognises our nation’s capacity to remain competitive in the modern, global economy relies on our ability to harness the power of our nation’s data. That is why the Turnbull Government put in place the Public Data Policy Statement in 2015, committing government agencies to a range of actions designed to optimise the use and reuse of public sector data.

It is now time to go further—to transform the data system in Australia and the way data is made available and used."

Until the government defines what is in and what is out of scope for the "national data system", everything in the report is meaningless and we cannot know what the role of the commissioner is or even could be. They are either being deliberately vague or don't realise just how woolly all this simplistic thinking is. Neither is a Good Thing.

In spite of the PC focusing on health data, health and health data are not mentioned once in the government's response. This is the only mention of the subject “Some 91 per cent of Australians would be willing to share their de-identified medical data if it went towards research purposes.” Research Australia, 2016

The government is certainly not going out of its way to talk a lot about health data and how it may be linked so that it "enables more targeted and effective policy development and program delivery".

Opt-out registration is only the first step. If patients and GPs are apathetic or boycott myhr, what will the government do next? A possibility is to compel GPs to upload more and more data from their clinical systems.

Keep your eyes open and join the dots


Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

IMHO, in reality, on its own opt-out will achieve very little.

Opt-out applies to registration, it doesn't mean that patients will get a summary of their health information, although the government propaganda will probably make that claim.

https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-you-your-family/what-is-in-my-health-record
says:

"What to expect when logging into My Health Record for the first time

The first time you log into your My Health Record there may be little of no information in it. Information will be added after visiting a healthcare provider such as a GP, pharmacist or hospital. You can begin to add your personal health information and notes straight away."

The success or otherwise of myhr is totally dependent on GPs. GPs are already being distracted by ePIP and soon the Department of Health's Provider Benefit Integrity Division will ramp up. See this for an indication of what they intend doing

Consultation Paper: Improving Medicare Compliance
https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/824207FEDBDDF73FCA257EF40007939F/$File/Compliance-Stakeholder-Consultation-Paper.pdf

Add the MADIP initiatives and it is pretty clear that the real beneficiary of myhr is not the patient, but the federal government. They already have billing data (MBS/PBS) and are trying to link clinical data to those numbers so that they can look for opportunities to reduce costs.

None of the stated objectives themselves are unreasonable. What really annoys me is the underhanded way the government is going about all this.

They are selling many of the projects on the basis of "better health care for Australians" or "Access to data is good for research". myhr helps with neither.

Bruce Farnell said...

Unfortunately, David, this is no surprise. The PHNs (and others) have been spruiking this thing since day one because that's where the money is and no-one is about to 'rock the boat'.

It matters not about the compromises to patient safety, it matters not about the waste of resources. So long as the lovely funding continues to be available. After all, it is someone else's money, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Well I was going to direct you here - https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/news-and-events/news/media-release-a-new-national-digital-collaborative-to-improve-child-health/17%20MR_Children's%20Digital%20Health%20Collaborative_V1_1%20Mar%202018%20%20%20CEO%20and%20eH....pdf

But this seems to have disappeared. Anyway NSW talks of the national data hub, presumably as a conformant repository to the MyHR. It is an interesting if somewhat underhanded way to establish this playing the child card.

Another example of transparency honesty and trust building.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

Try this.

https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/news-and-events/news/media-release-a-new-national-digital-collaborative-to-improve-child-health

Anonymous said...

On the surface this looks great. Not sure how a new born would feel empowered but then the ADHA CEO can’t help himself. If the states and territories would sort things out so they could share information across state boarders then this could be achieved without the Govhr. Perhaps they could just amend the act and still retire the system?

tygrus said...

Dilbert could have been talking about myHR...
The usefulness of bad data...
http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-04-03

Anonymous said...

Behind the scenes of the framework for action - ADHA deep dives - http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-04-20

Anonymous said...

Re-platforming myhr will probably put into the cloud. What a fantastic opportunity.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-11-14

Then make it mandatory.

Anonymous said...

data governance by Dilbert... could be worse... no wait....