This appeared last week:
My Health Record goes ‘share by default’ for pathology data
Justin Hendry
Editor
13 February 2025
Healthcare providers will be forced to upload key health information to My Health Record by default after laws designed to improve the utility of the national digital health platform passed parliament.
A bill which makes Medicare rebates for providers conditional upon pathology and diagnostic imaging reports being shared to the system passed both houses of parliament on Wednesday night.
The move by the federal government to make data more accessible follows a report that found the need for more timely access to key health information for patients and their health care providers.
In 2023, around half of all pathology reports and only one in five diagnostic imaging reports were shared to My Health Record by health providers, creating diagnosis and treatment delays.
While many pathology and diagnostic imaging providers have uplifted their systems since then, the government believes the sharing rate is still “too low and too slow”, prompting the legislation.
“It’s a complete waste of time and money for patients and for the health system,” Health minister Mark Butler said introducing the Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record-sharing By Default) Bill in November.
“If a patient gets a diagnostic scan or a pathology test, then those results should be shared or uploaded to their My Health Record. This was happening by exception. It was not the norm.”
But the changes have been met with opposition from several major peak bodies, with the Australian Medical Association going as far as to describe the laws as a “blunt tool” and “lazy policy”.
Australian Medical Association president Danielle McMullen made the comments ahead of the bill’s passage, with a main point of contention changes to withhold Medicare rebates unless required information is shared to My Health Record.
In instances were a healthcare provider – or associated healthcare providers – fails to do so, a “payment will become a debt recoverable by the Commonwealth”, according to the bill’s explanatory memorandum.
A series of legislative exceptions are provided, however, including where a patient has “advised that the information must not be uploaded” and where a healthcare provider “reasonably believes that the information should not be shared”.
Ms McMullen said that while the AMA is “very keen to see better uptake of the My Health Record”, simply “linking a patient’s Medicare rebate to a requirement to upload to the My Health Record is a blunt tool and is lazy policy”.
“We need to do much better as the reality is that the My Health system is out-of-date, clunky, and has become an electronic shoe box full of PDF records,” Ms McMullen said last week.
“We have discussed this issue with the Department of Health and Aged Care at length and we have been assured that there is no plan to extend the use of this power to GPs or other specialists in the near future.”
The government is expected to prescribe the exact health services that will be required to be shared in forthcoming rules that will be made under the My Health Records Act and Health Insurance Act.
A seven-day delay on pathology uploads is currently in place, having been introduced in 2014 to ensure healthcare providers responsible for follow-up care have time to review diagnostic imaging and pathology results and discuss them with patients.
Here is the link:
https://www.innovationaus.com/my-health-record-goes-share-by-default-for-pathology-data/
Here is the usage page:
https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/my-health-record/statistics
Lots of figures – but the message is that we are seeing a gradual increase in usage so we must cound that as a success:
As of December 2024 we are still not seeing how many records were being used among the millions being uploaded. I guess we would be told if it was significant! Will the changes help?
Time will tell…
David.
9 comments:
The My Health Record is being completely re-developed / re-engineered from the ground up.
Therefore it is total insanity to force / dump more data into the MHR system which the Department, the Minister and the ADHA acknowledge is a clunky technologically inadequate system which needs to be re-developed.
Insanity indeed.
Who cares? The AMA - no. The RACGP - no. The politicians - no. Anyone - no.
Why not stop this stupidity until the new MHR has been developed which I understand will take around 3 years?
AFAIK, it's only the infrastructure that's being re-developed. The not-fit-for-purpose of the functionality and data will still be there.
The Department of Health never understood why it is a pile of brownstuff and still don't.
In addition to a redevelopment of the My Health Record the Department is also embarking on another huge new project, the HIE - Health Information Exchange, so that everyone, everywhere, will be able to exchange health information with each other and with the My Health Record with FHIR - Fast Health Interoperability Resource as the key enabler of the "Xchange" process.
Or, have I misunderstood something?
@ 10:10 AM you say that you think it is only the infratucture being re-developed! I am sure the Department / ADHA has a Tender out for redesigning and rebuilding the My Health Record.
I seem to recall it has been acknowledged by the ADHA and the Health Department that the MHR is functionally clunky, confusing, user unfriendly and not intuitive, which, so they have admitted, explains why medical practitioners (GPs and Specialists) aren't using the system. This is the argument they have used to underpin their case for funding to redevelop the MHR.
Maybe someone could clarify this.
For a National system that has the potential to reach all corners of healthcare ADHA run very narrow nd selective engagements - perhaps that is at the heart of the problem.
The last decade or more have seen plenty of attempts to build a HIE in the US for exchanging medical recordv information between multiple users. I don't think any have succeeded; why on earth does the ADHA think it can?
Suppose the primary aim is interoperability—as in brokering the agreements between participating parties required at a policy. Business, technical data etc, laters, then in that case, do the minimum for the centralised database idea. At the same time, effort is put into replacing it with infrastructure that supports the recognition that Australian healthcare is a distributed problem. I think that is a good thing. They need to be careful not to create a three-body problem.
We have in fact spent 25 yrs trying to enable interoperability with Government help and zero results. It was actually going quite well before they kindly offered the help and the only things that really work are what was there before the government offered their billions. Strange that... If every interoperability failure was investigated, which is what is my bread and butter, you would discover the cause is non compliance with standards at the sender or receiver, or both. Strange that the one thing government has never done is implement a requirement for standards compliance?
For quite a long while I have taken the view that they don't want interoperability, but want a database of everyone's results and actually discourage point to point data transfer by refusing to do the obvious thing, which is demand standards compliance/testing/promotion?
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