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."

Saturday, July 07, 2018

Just To Point Out It Is Seven Months Since We Heard From The ADHA Board

Captured today at 1:30pm.

Australian Digital Health Agency Board

Mr Jim Birch AM

Mr Jim Birch AM, Chair

is also Chair of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, Deputy Chair of the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority, Chair of Mary MacKillop Care SA and a board member of the Australian Red Cross Society, the Little Company of Mary Health Care and Cancer SA. He was formally a Partner in Ernst and Young having been the Global Health Leader. He has also been the Government and Public Sector Leader from 2012 until the end of 2014. Formerly Mr Birch was also the Lead Partner in Health and Human Services for Asia Pacific. He has over thirty five years’ experience in planning, leading and implementing change in complex organisations transcending such areas as healthcare, justice and human services. Mr Birch has been a Chief Executive of a Human Services and Health Department (South Australia), Deputy Chief Executive of Justice and Chief Executive of major health service delivery organisations, including teaching hospitals. Mr Birch has previously been Chair of the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council, a member of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care and was a Board Member of the National E-Health Transition Authority and Chair of Rural Health Workforce Australia. He has a Bachelor of Health Administration from the University of New South Wales.
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The above is just so you know who is actually responsible for this issue....
I note there seems to have been some turnover of the Board recently and I wonder if that is causing issues?
David.



12 comments:

Anonymous said...

What do you expect, David. The ADHA is not in the habit of telling us anything more than they want us to know. It's called spin, smoke and mirrors, and is not designed to engender trust and/or confidence. It's likely to be their downfall. It might also take down Greg Hunt. Serves him right for not understanding whats going on in his name.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of changes to board etc.. like all commonwealth entities there is a thing called “information publication scheme” (IPS)

The ADHA is not exactly meeting their own low bar - https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/about-the-agency/freedom-of-information-foi/agency-plan

Now for a government agency supposedly managing citizens information they do a shocking job of managing their own simple information obligations

Anonymous said...

I would have to agree, the ADHA after two years appears to struggle with the basics of business let alone the template government business. Something is going to go terribly wrong.

Anonymous said...

It is exactly why government discourage recruitment by personal relationship. Parts of the ADHA are riff with it and it makes life difficult.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

Could I point out is is over six years since PCEHR went live and they are only now trying to find out if could ever be of use by running "test Bed" projects that will produce evidence of benefit in a couple of years at best. The fact that they are only looking for benefits, not costs and risks is another matter.

Then there is this:

Advance Care planning and My Health Record
http://nrgpn.org.au/index.php/56-hot/725-advance-care-planning-and-my-health-record

Published: 01 July 2018

"However, legal and ethical barriers exist that may limit implementation of Advance Care Directives."

How come the government has implemented a system with so many open questions about its usefulness and legality?

Everything about My Health Record is backwards. The first thing they did is implement the system as opt-in. Then they decided to make it opt-out because nobody was using it. They are now looking for problems it might solve. Someone is now asking "is this system fully legal?"

At some stage they will ask "is this system acceptable to most Australians?"

IMHO they will eventually discover that the system is more trouble than it is worth - something that should have been realised before some dumb bureaucrats decided to pump millions into a "good idea" that, on closer examination and analysis has no chance of ever delivering anything useful.

Anonymous said...

Will they reach a tipping point where the government will not know how to turn it off?

Anonymous said...

The MyHR is embedded and forms the central core of our modern health system. What needs to now take place is a redefining of all the end points and feeder systems. The MyHR should be extended to be the national secure messaging exchange with a view that over time GP systems and others can work directly from the MyHR using a modern cloud based approach. Local sites need only login, we can remove the need for multiple systems and endless security issues.

Dr David G More MB PhD said...

@July 08, 2018 8:57 PM

Can I ask just what you are smoking and how likely you think it is that GPs - having been abused with rate freezes etc. - would ever agree even if it made sense...which it doesn't.

David.

Anonymous said...

As illogical as it sounds 8:57 PM is probably not far from the truth. MyHR has demonstrated to the stay relevant all else must be burned. Has the hallmarks of Nero and the great fire of Rome.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

@July 08, 2018 8:57 PM.

It's either sarcasm or ignorance.

If it isn't sarcasm, the poster needs to be aware that fewer than 2% of the population have had a Shared Health Summary uploaded this year. Anything older than that is totally unreliable.

Andrew McIntyre said...

The ADHA are naive enough to think that the MyEHR could replace secure messaging and electronic health records and that would be a good thing. In fact they keep threatening that to secure messaging providers, which just makes it hard to take take them seriously.

Really we could do it today, just fax your notes in to a central repository and ring a number and hit patients ID on keypad and have them fax out the patients notes when you want them. With all the "Bonfire of the faxes" talk they fail to realize that they have just created a efax network. It may be implemented via pdfs, but its still an image of data and not real hard data.

They could then implement decision support by faxing notes to an expert and have them read them and fax back advice. For cumulative results we could have public servants that read all the pathology faxes and transcribe the results into a spreadsheet and then create a graph in excel and fax it back to you!

By reducing inter-operability to the era of eGutenberg we do overcome all those pesky problems of atomic data, standards and geeky data formats and it would provide employment for thousands of scribes to read pathology tests and enter data into spreadsheets, maybe they plan on outsourcing that to India?

Is this really the best we can do?

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

And then there's their argument about not having to remember you medication.

I take a couple of pills each morning so I took a photo on my smartphone of the important bits of information. If it were really important I could make the picture my wallpaper it could be readily seen without even knowing the PIN. Far more accessible and quicker to find. If I had an allergy I could have a medic-alert.

You know, take control of my health at zero cost and far less risk to my privacy.