It Seems The ADHA Has Known For A Good While What Other Polls Say. Many Doctors Don’t Think Much Of The #myHR!

This appeared last week:

FOI documents reveal what GPs are getting out of My Health Record

Internal report suggests (some) doctors have found (some) clinical benefit

Antony Scholefield

29th March 2019

Only one in two GPs using My Health Record think its clinical value justifies the time and effort involved in maintaining the system, the government’s own internal research has found.

Documents released under freedom of information laws suggest the Australian Digital Health Agency was aware it had a serious perception issue among its GP users in the months before the system went opt-out last year.

The agency commissioned two surveys of GPs, non-GP specialists, pharmacists and nurses in April and then again in August last year.

GPs — whose role in uploading and curating shared health summaries is seen as central to the system — were the least likely to recommend My Health Record to colleagues or request it for their own care.

GPs were also asked to indicate whether the $2 billion system had ever been helpful in terms of patient care, including whether it had avoided an adverse event, avoided a needless pathology or imaging test. 

The results were mixed, with 40% saying they had received no benefit.

Some 184 GPs took part. However, only 97 non-GP specialists were surveyed and, of those, only eight had actually used the system since it was first rolled out in 2012.

The document released to Australian Doctor on Thursday included a commentary and conclusions on the results, however, all the text had been censored.

More here:

https://www.australiandoctor.com.au/news/foi-documents-reveal-what-gps-are-getting-out-my-health-record

The most important table in the article is this one:

----- Begin Table.

Has My Health Record ever improved patient care?

The percentage of GPs who reported a positive experience

I was able to view information that was previously unknown or inaccessible              28%

I avoided a potential adverse medicine event                                                                     17%

I experienced better team-based chronic disease management by sharing information 16%

A patient took a more active role in managing their health                                              15%

I saved time gathering patient information                                                                           36%

I saved time communicating to other providers                                                                   22%

I avoided ordering a pathology or imaging test                                                                    19 %

I had more confidence in a clinical decision                                                                          14 %

I modified an approach to diagnosis or treatment                                                               13 %
I never experienced a benefit                                                                                                   39 %

----- End Table.

Sadly we do not know anything from the article about sample selection etc. so it is hard to really interpret what we have here. We also don’t know when the survey was done so I suggest you make of the figures what you can.

What we do know is that not just publishing the material, once completed, in full is plain wrong. This is a public organization and it should be open and transparent with the public – not make rubbish excuses for redacting material and not simply just making the material public.

Trust is low in Government but it is much lower in the ADHA I reckon!

David.