Joint press conference, Parliament House, Canberra
Relevant Paragraph:
KATY GALLAGHER:
Thanks very much, Jim. So just taking off where Jim's left. He's giving you an outline of the FBO - that's in a sense, looking back. Looking in the 2022-23 financial year, we've already had to make provision for costs in the order of five and a half billion dollars. These are costs that no provision was made for. They are largely across the pandemic related costs. So some of the money that Minister Butler announced yesterday - the $1.4 billion largely for aged care support and keeping respiratory clinics going and that type of thing, other payments related to the pandemic and also the $2 billion - with these numbers to be finalised of course - for flood related costs as well. So that's just giving you a sense of some of the magnitude of some of the immediate pressures that we're dealing with. On top of that - and we're working through this calmly in the Budget process - there's a range of other programmes right across the public service where they were funded for the short term but they are ongoing programs, and we're having to work through those as well. If I use health as an example, there's a couple of hundred terminating measures. Now some of those may not be ongoing once we've worked through them all, but some of them will be. And to give you an indication of those: things like the digital health record, Closing the Gap measures, the early psychosis centres for people with severe mental illness, public dental services for adults. Now, clearly, those are programs that are ongoing, but haven't been factored in and they're creating pressures as well. So managing that and working through those is going to take a bit of work. But clearly, under the previous government, there were decisions taken where ongoing programs were not funded in an ongoing sense and that is creating pressure in those forward estimate years as well.
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So clearly the ongoing funding is under review....
David.
10 comments:
Certainly a shift in language. I am not convinced that what is said is little more than a hastily and poorly strung together talking points. I’ll hold my breath a bit longer.
Wasn't the digital health record supposed to save billions and increase efficiency? If it had, it would have been self funding.
Well, that didn't happen.
The digital health record and ADHA are just a millstone round the neck of the Health Department. Maybe the razor gang is finally waking up to the reality of the empty promises.
The Finance Minister is interested in knowing "How much the MyHealth Record Project is costing the budget annually".
I would be grateful to anyone who can help throw some light on this.
The headline figure I am looking for is $???M per annum x 4 years to arrive at a 4 year total of $???M.
Also, does that figure include the the cost of maintaining the ADHA?
It would be helpful if a reference could be provided pointing to each $-item.
I think this is a good starting point - from today....
https://www.innovationaus.com/my-health-record-funding-void-adds-to-budget-pressures/
The Government has had a long record of not providing useful aggregate figures and she might like to have Treasury / Health clarify the whole thing given she can just ask / demand and answer!
David
At about $3 billion in total, My Health Record is an expensive white elephant. A cost/benefit analysis would no doubt show that patients and clinicians alike find it largely useless, which is no surprise given the technology it uses.
This may help:
https://medicalrepublic.com.au/my-health-record-from-dumb-numbers-to-meaningful-use/67736?utm_source=website&utm_medium=listings-search&utm_campaign=my%20health%20record
Senator Gallagher may find that with a budget shortfall and a healthcare crisis (including ambulance ramping and critical staffing shortages), there are many more worthwhile projects to plunge money into than My Health Record.
@3:26 and 3:54 PM thank you both for your input very helpful. Any additional detail from readers would also be most welcome. The more accurate and detailed the better. Again, thank you all.
The more useful number is the ongoing per-capita annual cost.
Total cost to date is less useful without a. A timeframe, and b. A split between "capital" cost and operational cost.
From memory, the March budget and additional spending has placed the ADHA at a $300+ million drain on the public purse for this financial year.
X 4 years it will be more significant per annum given the need to entirely replatform My Health Record because it is on obsolete and inappropriate tech.
Why would we waste any more taxpayer dollars on a health technology project that provides no real clinical value?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/06/my-health-record-after-12-years-and-more-than-2bn-hardly-anyone-is-using-digital-service
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33898021/
As for whether the figure includes the cost of maintaining the ADHA – the ADHA is My Health Record. It spends its time holding meetings in community centres around Australia trying to generate uptake.
The agency's recent desperate attempts to suggest it has any further value ("directing" FHIR uptake, etc) is nonsense designed to trick the new government into funding it further.
The ADHA claims it developed a National Digital Health Strategy and a Framework for Action.
According to their website the Framework for Action is the implementation plan and it has 44 activities that have been prioritised for delivery by 2022.
How about an assessment as to the value of the strategy and what benefits the actions have delivered.
All ADHA did was rehash and rebrand others work and quietly shuffled them out or froze any thoughts the might have and packed them into career deep freeze.
There specifications, architectures, and management are all dated and do not fit into a vastly change healthcare setting. They talk about FHIR the same way enterprises adopt SaFE to oriented to be agile when they in fact break every principle.
The measure in value is in who does not build value from their outputs - ADHA likes big numbers
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