This appeared last week:
More than 1.3 million GP appointments booked online
Monday, 28 May 2018
eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth
More than 1.3 million GP appointments have been booked online via a patient portal in New Zealand.
More than 400,000 repeat prescriptions have also been ordered electronically, saving patients a phone call or visit to their GP.
Figures gathered by eHealthNews from New Zealand’s three main patient portal providers reveal that patients are increasingly using digital services to communicate with their GP practice.
Around 550,000 of New Zealand’s 4.5 million patients (12 per cent) are registered with a patient portal and 545 practices offer one. A patient portal is a secure online site where patients can access their health information and interact with their GP.
ConnectMed provides a patient portal to 125 practices and says more than one million patient appointments have been booked electronically via the service.
ConnectMed co-founder Ryan Thatcher says use of the booking function grew from 130,000 in 2015 to 450,000 appointments booked last year and figures are expected to jump again in 2018.
Ryan says most clinics have turned on the ability for patients to order repeat prescriptions – nearly 100,000 have been ordered online – and about half are now offering access to lab results.
The company has also recently added video consultation functionality via the patient portal and has a few practices using it.
ManageMyHealth patient portal, provided by Medtech, has more than 330,000 registered users and more than 120,000 users of its mobile app.
The company says patient numbers are always on the rise and grew by 70 per cent last year.
More here:
What you have here are New Zealanders having what patients need and want, provided by a commercial portals and subscriber GPs etc. delivering the Digital Health goods on an absolute shoe-string while Australia wastes billions on a system that will never offer prescription repeats, booking and so on! And no need for opt-out – those who need the service can get it simply and easily and the rest of us can get on with our lives!
The whole myHR effort needs to be re-cast to be patient and clinically centric and voluntary – not administratively centric and almost compulsory as it presently is!
David.
IMHO, the fundamental difference between the NZ system and myhr is encapsulated in this quote:
ReplyDelete"A patient portal is a secure online site where patients can access their health information and interact with their GP."
i.e it is not an additional, secondary, government owned system storing copies of summary patient data.
The NZ system enables patients to enhance the patient/GP interaction without having the government in between. In NZ there is no need for patients and GPs to ask themselves "Do I trust the government?". In Australia, that's the central question.
The world is moving towards this architecture, as we've seen in the UK and Sweden.
IMHO, Australia is making exactly the same errors as were made in the UK when they tried using Behavioural Economics (i.e. nudge). Not only that but the same people are making the same mistakes all over again. Literally.
Resorting to nudge techniques aimed at both patients (i.e. making it opt-out, a classic nudge tactic) and GPs (something we discovered in the test bed REI) is an admission that the system has little or no intrinsic appeal or value and that other means are needed to gather the data so valued by the government.
The company has also recently added video consultation functionality via the patient portal and has a few practices using it.
ReplyDeleteHow you going to achieve that minister?
In NZ, GPs and health providers pay for these systems because there is value in them.
ReplyDeleteIn Australia the government has to pay GPs to use My Health Record.
What does that tell you?
Yes, I can very happily confirm, my sister in a fairly ordinary Wellington suburb, has been using MedTech's Manage My Health record system for nearly a year now....
ReplyDeleteHer GP suggested it after tests and investigations for a couple of matters which are now under control. She is nearly 70 and is far from computer-savvy but she has no trouble using it, as she showed me on a recent visit.
When establishing a new medication regime, my sister experienced some unpleasant side effects, which she communicated to her doctor online, and the splendid chap phoned her at home that evening to explain he would try something else, and a script would be ready to collect at the desk first thing in the morning.
She shares her MMH with one or two specialists/allied health and everyone has accurate, up-to-date information - miraculously without sharing it with the entire world and without the need for an overpaid Tim Kelsey and his ballooning crew.
But we must save humanity from the evil fax. And I need all that Data to prove to the House of Commons I was right.
ReplyDeleteAnonymousJune 06, 2018 12:24 PM. Thanks for sharing and wish your sister best if health
ReplyDelete