This appeared a few days ago.
Government to push ahead with mandatory vaccination reporting Bill
Should the changes pass, providers will face a $6660 penalty for not reporting newly administered vaccines to the Australian Immunisation Register.
Matt Woodley
4 December, 2020
The proposed amendment,
tabled in Parliament earlier this week by Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt,
would compel GPs and other vaccine providers to report all newly administered
vaccines to the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).
Currently, the recording of vaccinations on the AIR is encouraged, rather than
mandatory, which has resulted in vast under-reporting from some sectors and been
identified as an area of ‘great concern’ by the RACGP.
A public submission
signed by former Acting RACGP President Associate Professor Ayman Shenouda was broadly supportive
of the amendments, but did express concerns regarding punitive compliance
measures, such as fines, aimed at increasing reporting rates.
‘There are many reasons which may impact on a GP’s ability to report a vaccine
to [the] AIR; temporary technological failure or limitations, lack of consent from
the patient, or workforce shortages,’ Associate Professor Shenouda wrote.
‘GPs and general practices must not be penalised or prevented from providing
future vaccines under these circumstances.
‘Instead, the focus should be on identifying the reason for under-reporting and
finding solutions to improve reporting levels.’
However, despite these reservations, the changes – which have bipartisan
support – include provisions for a civil penalty of ‘30 penalty units’ (equivalent
to $6660) should the provider not report ‘within the period prescribed by
the rules and in the manner prescribed by the rules’.
Upon tabling the Bill in Parliament, Minister Hunt said the proposed changes
will ensure Australians can access their vaccine history through the ‘safe and
secure’ AIR.
‘The need for the Australian Immunisation Register
Amendment (Reporting) Bill 2020 arose from the need to provide
Australians with information about their immunisation history, to support the
rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine and the ongoing administration of the NIP
[National Immunisation Program],’ he said.
‘There is currently no statutory mechanism by which the Government can require
vaccination providers to report all vaccines administered. Without such a mechanism
on which to rely, the Government will be unable to enforce the mandatory
reporting of COVID-19 vaccines administered, once a vaccine becomes available
for clinical use.
‘The amendments in the Bill will support Australians’ health and wellbeing by
improving reporting to the AIR to better inform vaccine projections,
purchasing, delivery and program performance, and analyses of vaccine
effectiveness and safety, which will be particularly important for the COVID-19
vaccines.
‘The details of the reporting obligations, including who is obliged to report
and what information is to be reported in what time frames, will be prescribed
in the Australian Immunisation Register rules to be made under this Bill.’
More here:
https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/professional/government-to-push-ahead-with-mandatory-vaccinatio
There is also coverage here:
Australia 'ahead of schedule' on COVID-19 vaccine plan
By Rachel Clun
December 3, 2020 — 1.52pm
Australia could approve a COVID-19 vaccine almost two months ahead of schedule, the head of the medical regulator says, after the UK on Wednesday became the first Western country to take such a step.
The Morrison government also confirmed people will have full access to their own vaccination records but other companies would not be able to access it, in order to protect people's privacy.
The UK is expected to begin vaccinating vulnerable people as soon as next week after giving emergency approval to a COVID-19 vaccination on Wednesday.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said Australia was "ahead of schedule" on its five-stage vaccination rollout.
"We are on track for decisions on the early vaccines by the end of January," he said on Thursday morning, adding that subject to approvals the country could then start vaccinating health workers in March.
…… Lots omitted
On Thursday the government tabled the Australian Immunisation Register amendment, which would make it compulsory for doctors to record if patients had received a COVID-19 vaccine.
Minister Hunt said there was "no prospect" of that vaccination data going directly from government to airlines or other companies that requested it.
"What we're doing is making sure that everybody will have full access to their own data. Only those people have access," he said. "It's a matter of individual control of individual records."
Royal Australian College of General Practitioners spokeswoman Associate Professor Charlotte Hespe said data from the register is uploaded to My Health Record, which patients can access through their own MyGov accounts.
"This information is also available via the Medicare application and anyone can download an immunisation statement via Medicare Online, which includes a report of a patient's immunisation history," she said.
"It is up to patients to decide what works best for them and GPs can assist with any queries."
The full article is here:
There is information of the AIR here:
https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/services/medicare/australian-immunisation-register
And info for professionals is here:
The bottom line here is that the GPs using a Practice Management System will probably have secure electronic access to the AIR and so will be able to comply by spending a few minutes entering each patient’s data – which will add up, if they are doing multiple cases, to real cost. This will be in addition to the time spent getting consent to upload the data and so on.
To me the link to the #myHealthRecord is rather tenuous and it is by no means clear just how patients are to access their record without being a myGov / #myHealthRecord user. AFAIK there is no direct online access for patients – but you can request a static report on your AIR contents.
At this point I believe the penalty levels are really over the top while agreeing that for all our sakes the data needs to be securely collected to monitor for side-effects and so on.
We need much more detail on just how all this is going to be done, how patients can consent and see their data and how GPs are reasonably paid for their time and effort.
A long way to go and many questions to answer I reckon.
David.
7 comments:
Re vaccination reporting and MyHR. I recently had a vaccination and it appeared in my MyHR. There are instructions that tell you how you can hide it, restrict it, or delete it completely. In other words, MyHR is totally unreliable, along with anything else in there, apart from a Shared Health Summary, which you can't hide or delete. In fact, AFAIK, if you have a SHS, there's no way to delete it even if it is incorrect, all you can do is get a GP to upload a new one.
Who is accountable and subject to legal proceedings if the MyHR information is used and the outcome results in harm due to missing or incorrect/ outdated information obtained through the ADHA MyHR?
@December 10, 2020 8:10 AM
The government's website doesn't say a lot about using MyHR data. All I could find was this under patient access controls
"The value of a My Health Record for a patient's medical care will largely depend on the information it contains about the patient's health status and the care they have received. As the patient's healthcare provider organisation, you could explain how the patient might set access controls in a way that is beneficial to them given their clinical situation.
You could also explain the clinical implications of excluding particular information and limiting access to certain types of providers who may need to access the record from time to time to facilitate their care of the patient in the future.
Healthcare provider organisations are encouraged to use normal clinical judgement in situations where information may be absent or incomplete. "
https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-healthcare-professionals/howtos/patient-access-controls
Although how you know if there is something missing is beyond me.
Any healthcare provider relying on MyHR and not confirming the information would be silly in the extreme.
MyHR was built for patents, hence the name and the opt-in approach. It was never intended to be used in support of primary care, doctors were advised not to rely on it.
That approach failed which is why they made it opt-out. That also failed which is why they are desperately trying to "re platform" it. The focus is now on an ecosystem. Sounds rather like a health Information Exchange. I wonder why nobody's thought of that before. /s
Is it unreasonable to ask What problem are they trying to solve?
Unreasonable? Or futile?
Not at all unreasonable. I think they will say they are trying to deliver a totally seamless integrated health system operating across all health domains and between all service providers.
According to my Immunisation Record, my most recent Influenza jab in April 2020 is noted as a bare "Influenza", whereas for the previous four years the type of vaccine is recorded - Fluarix Tetra, etc. I guess the data will have to be quite specific for COVID19.
Is anyone using the MyGovID app? I tried the Australia Post portal to get a MyGov digital ID a while ago, but couldn't get it to scan my passport and worried that I'd have to go a passport office to check my passport is readable. However, when I went through the procedure for MyGovID the passport check was OK.
Now I'm trying to understand the use of MyGovId - it doesn't seem to give access to MyGov, I had to go through the usual authentication.
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