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or

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Thursday, February 21, 2019

I Am Not Sure The ADHA Fraud Policy Cuts The Mustard – Your View?

This appeared recently on the ADHA site

Reporting fraud

What is fraud?

The Commonwealth defines fraud as "dishonestly obtaining a benefit, or causing a loss, by deception or other means". In this definition, "benefit" can be money or objects, power, status or information.

Reporting fraud

The Australian Digital Health Agency is committed to preventing fraud in all aspects of its business. If you suspect fraudulent activity within a program administered by the Agency, you should report it.

How to report fraud

You can provide information about suspected fraudulent activities or unethical behaviour by:

What information should you provide?

The Agency takes all allegations of fraud seriously, but does require specific information to enable it to deal with your matter appropriately. By providing more information in the first instance (including supporting documents), we can investigate your matter more efficiently.
You are encouraged to provide the following information:
  • Who is involved? Include as much detail as you can such as the name of the person or organisation, date of birth, addresses and phone numbers.
  • What fraud do you think has occurred? Please provide details of your concerns about the activity, including how, when and where it occurred.
  • How did you come across this information?
  • Your contact details (you can provide information anonymously using the online reporting tool).

What will happen next?

The Agency will make appropriate enquiries into your allegations. Due to privacy restrictions and the need to protect the integrity of any further investigation, the Agency may not provide you with details of the outcome of these enquiries. Please note that if your allegation involves another individual, the Agency may not be able to give you any information about the conduct or outcome of the investigation due to our obligations under the Privacy Act 1988.

Privacy

For more information on the ways the Agency handles your personal information, how you can access and seek correction of the information, how privacy complaints can be made and how the Agency deals with such complaints, please see the Agency Privacy Policy
Here is the link:
Now tell me if I read this wrong but as I see it the Policy says give us everything you know about a possible fraud. We will investigate but we then, only at our discretion, will tell you the outcome of the enquires.
IMVHO fraud is a crime. If the agency finds any it should tell the person who reported it and the Police surely. If no fraud is found that should be reported back as well.
Otherwise they can investigate an issue, alert the offender (who will duck for cover) , cover it up and tell no-one anything? Surely this approach does not exactly pass the 'pub test'?
What do others think of this?
David.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

David as someone who works at ADHA, you report, you get torn to shrewd and eventually leave while you still have some sanity left. This is based on more than one instance observed. The efforts of Tim and Bettina work, no one questions no one mentions. We operate to Sergeant Shultz philosophy.

Anonymous said...

@1:01 PM. This is an extraordinary claim reminiscent of similar claims made during when NEHTA was in charge.

I find them difficult to believe. I have met Tim Kelsey and Bettina and his clinical expert Meredith. I have found them always polite and understanding and very interested in what I have had to say. I wonder whether you are working in another organisation.

Anonymous said...

There's a big difference between how they treat outsiders and how they treat staff.

Anonymous said...

@10:39 AM and 1:19 PM - what I have consistently noticed when in a 'discussion' with these people is that there is a pattern where they never inquire, never ask a question. It doesn't make any difference whether it's with outsiders or with staff.

It's almost as though they 'think' they don't need to ask any questions because they already know it all. A lot of managers are like that - it reflects how they see themselves - just do as I say, don't tell me what you know, I don't need to know what you think or know.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

1:52pm
My opinion exactly.

Shortly after he tool up the job, I went to see him and offered to help/and or contribute.

I came away with the distinct impression that he knew everything he thought he needed to know. I suspect he still does.

Anonymous said...

Complacency, stuck in a time warp is a common and clear sign of a CEO with a long expired use-by date. The ADHA strategy was to blame NEHTA and all who came before them, that no longer has currency and on review there is little the ADHA can say is their contribution.

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

ADHA has final produced its latest weekly statistics. The previous set were for 13 January, 5 weeks ago.

They have stopped releasing data for the number of registrations, instead they claim a participation rate of 90.1% - which of course is just plain silly. To say that by registering someone for a myhr without their consent they are "participating" is tantamount to plain and simple fraud.

The interesting figure is the number of Shared Health Summaries uploaded ever.

They have not dated the document (which seems to be in line with their strategy obfuscating data (so much for transparency and good governance) but it is probably safe to say it was somewhere between 15 and 22 February.

It is possible to calculate a daily rate of Shared Health Summaries uploaded.

The figure for the week ending 13 January was 2,350,961. The figure released today (22 February) was 2,415,994

This means that the daily rate of Shared Health Summaries uploaded is between 1,971 and 1626.

This is pretty dismal, considering the daily rates calculated from data published during the opt-out period (22 July to 13 January) were:

3,005 2,990 2,805 2,169 2,181 2,261 2,349 2,373 2,411 2,344
2,038 3,178 2,887 3,114 2,731 2,275 2,258 2,459 1,888

This trend is also reflected in the discharge summaries
18-Nov 2-Dec 16-Dec 13-Jan 22-Feb
change 2,836 3,302 3,610 2,889 1,646
daily rate 405 236 258 103 41

and event summaries
18-Nov 2-Dec 16-Dec 13-Jan 22-Feb
change 6,773 13,521 13,930 20,088 23,132
daily rate 968 966 995 717 578

ADHA and Health may be putting on a brave and defiant face but the reality of the numbers would suggest that, in spite of (or maybe because of) the publicity, the health community (you know the ones who actually upload data) have lost interest.

Of course the data could be totally wrong and my conclusions also way of the mark.

But whatever it is, it doesn't look good.

Dr Ian Colclough said...

"They have stopped releasing data for the number of registrations"

The date shown in small print under participation rate is 31 January 2019.