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."

Sunday, February 21, 2021

I Really Think This Is Being Grossly Over-Hyped By The ADHA As A ‘Great Step Forward’. It Isn’t!

This appeared a few days ago.

Hospital staff can make more informed decisions as SA electronic medical records system linked to My Health Record

Published 17 February 2021

Senior Intensive Care Specialist at Flinders Medical Centre and Chief Medical Information Officer for Digital Health SA Dr Santosh Verghese said the inclusion of My Health Record in South Australia’s electronic medical record system will improve clinical interactions with patients and ensure care is based on their medical history and directives. 

“In an ICU setting the arrival of patients is unpredictable and time critical when dealing with trauma,” he said.

“In this situation, access to the patient’s medical records and encounter history ensures the ICU clinicians can make informed decisions when the traditional health care networks and family networks are inaccessible.”

This development follows the announcement by Australian Digital Health Agency CEO Amanda Cattermole that work is complete on an integrated Sunrise electronic medical record (EMR) My Health Record (MHR) viewer in South Australia.

“This is a great step forward for SA Health clinicians who are now able to view and contribute to the My Health Record seamlessly through their clinical workflows,” Ms Cattermole said.

Sunrise EMR & PAS (Sunrise EMR) is the patient electronic medical record used in South Australia.

Sunrise EMR is used at many of the state’s public hospitals and healthcare facilities where it replaces the need for paper-based medical record documents and provides many benefits to patients and staff.

Thirty-three percent of public hospital beds in South Australia Health have access to an EMR and, through an embedded tab within the Sunrise EMR, access to My Health Record.

In mid-2020, the Agency and SA Health worked together to rapidly validate a proof of concept that builds on work conducted during the My Health Record expansion program in 2018/19 enabling uploading to and viewing of information in My Health Record. 

Ms Cattermole said the use of patient information in My Health Record is more widely adopted because of this work, as information is easier to access and nationally hospital staff are viewing over a 100,000 My Health Record documents a week.”

“South Australian patients will now benefit from improved handover of care as a result of access to information spanning their health journey and a reduction in user errors by having a solution that enforces patient context,” she said.

Tracie Nicolai, Associate Nurse Unit Manager and Clinical Documentation Specialist at Port Augusta Hospital said she was thrilled to see the new MHR tab in Sunrise EMR and was excited about the potential it had to improve patient care.

“In Flinders and Upper North Local Health Network we often observe patients with challenging personal situations and diverse cultural backgrounds,” she said.

“The transient nature of these patients, past history in human services guardianship and limited trust in the system means the records we have access to within the hospital and local health network only represent a fraction of their medical history. 

“The MHR tab has created a single view of the patient’s encounters with different parts of the health care systems and networks in SA and Interstate.”

The following key clinical documents will be able to be viewed in an individual’s My Health Record where one exists:

  • Shared health summaries generated by General Practitioners (GPs).
  • Event summaries from various healthcare providers.
  • Discharge (separation) summaries.
  • Pathology and medical imaging reports.
  • Prescription and pharmacy dispensing information.
  • Letters from specialists.
  • Advance Care Directives.

Here is the link:

https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/newsroom/media-releases/recent-media-releases/hospital-staff-can-make-more-informed-decisions-as-sa-electronic-medical-records-system-linked-to-my-health-record

As usual the release was rewritten, added to and modified. See here:

https://www.govtechreview.com.au/content/gov-digital/news/sa-electronic-medical-records-linked-to-my-health-record-1059448918

SA electronic medical records linked to My Health Record

Friday, 19 February, 2021

The inclusion of My Health Record in South Australia’s electronic medical record system will improve clinical interactions with patients and ensure that care is based on medical history and directives, according to Dr Santosh Verghese, Chief Medical Information Officer for Digital Health SA.

Dr Verghese said that in an ICU setting, the arrival of patients is unpredictable and can be time critical when dealing with trauma. In this situation, access to the patient’s medical records and encounter history would enable ICU clinicians to make informed decisions when the traditional healthcare networks and family networks are inaccessible.

This development follows an announcement that work is complete on an integrated Sunrise electronic medical record (EMR) My Health Record (MHR) viewer in South Australia. Australian Digital Health Agency CEO Amanda Cattermole said this will enable SA Health clinicians to view and contribute to the My Health Record through their clinical workflows.

Sunrise EMR & PAS (Sunrise EMR) is the patient electronic medical record used in South Australia. It is used at many of the state’s public hospitals and healthcare facilities, replacing the need for paper-based medical record documents and providing many benefits to patients and staff.

Approximately 33% of public hospital beds in South Australia Health have access to an EMR and, through an embedded tab within the Sunrise EMR, access to My Health Record. In mid-2020, the Agency and SA Health worked together to validate a proof of concept that builds on work conducted during the My Health Record expansion program in 2018–19, enabling uploading to and viewing of information in My Health Record.

More here:

https://www.govtechreview.com.au/content/gov-digital/news/sa-electronic-medical-records-linked-to-my-health-record-1059448918

I find it interesting that the myHR would be seen as important as part of what is live, current and focused EMR held in a large hospital which would include current path, images and presumably records of previous admissions.

While a quick look once in the admission of a new patient may be worthwhile so much of the information found will be incomplete, out of date or just missing that the utility is pretty low. Remember the vast majority of myHR records contain no clinician entered content.

As for the myHR being part of a clinical workflow, rather than the local Sunrise EMR this is just nonsense!

I also find it interesting that this addition to the Sunrise EMR has been underway since 2018 or so and is still being pursued in the absence of any real evidence of value or impact so many years after the #myHR was introduced. I am sure if there was any real evidence there would be daily press releases!!

Again the see the ADHA beating up what is a pretty minor improvement in a system that has proved by its unpopularity with clinicians to be an expensive waste of space!

Won’t they ever learn?

David.

 

3 comments:

Bernard Robertson-Dunn said...

Let's see if I've got this right.

A patient rocks up to a hospital. f it is a planned visit, there will be a referral/ If it is an unexpected visit or a true emergency, then there won't be a referral.

At either point the SA staff can look up a patient's myhr. If there is something of value there (e.g. a comprehensive shared health summary, of which there appears to be very few) then there is a benefit to the health professionals.

After that, everything that happens to the patient will be on the SA hospital system and the myhr will be irrelevant.

In the total workflow, myhr plays, at best, a very small part, at worst can be misleading.

Not exactly something to trumpet about, although if the average punter knows nothing abut the myhr, they might believe there is tremendous value from having their complete medical record in the thing - which of course is a myth created by the ADHA.

Peter Padd said...

A post on 20 feb under the telemedicine posting seems fitting here -

Every time they launch a wonderful new program, “In 5 year’s time, after we invested all this money, look at how life will be,” people are scanning 5% of what you say through the patterns of previous initiatives, and that’s their response.
The way we introduce programmes has got to change because we need to deal with reality. END QUOTE.

Maps into this rather well IMHO

Anonymous said...

It will look nothing like what the states signed up for when they signed us all up for this bollocks. 10 years ago SA health would have been integrated into the GovHR