This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
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."
What can one say about the US. Sadly nothing good as Trump is getting more out of control by the week. It is hard to see where this all ends, but the public hearings on planned impeachment will be must watch TV when they occur.Next week I hear
We now have an election on December 12 and the carry on between then and now I am sure we will be fascinating…
ScoMo is totally off on a frolic trying to supress the public concern regarding climate change by banning protest and boycotts. How il-liberal can you be for a so called Liberal Government who has all its advisors telling it how dangerous climate change actually is! The drought is unrelated I am sure - but it is costing a lot to try and help...
Even worse for ScoMo is the damning interim report on Aged Care which demands expensive and prompt action and a disastrous and expensive drought. Oh and Private Health Insurance is unravelling as we watch while poor mental health is costing $180bn a year - yikes!
He has more than enough on his plate while we have Minsters going around annoying the Chinese. Good he at least had a good meeting at the East Asia Summit with the Chinese Premier!
First-home buyers wanting to tap into the federal government's new deposit scheme will be limited to properties sold for less than $700,000 in Sydney and $600,000 in Melbourne, under new draft rules released on Sunday.
The scheme allows low- and middle-income earners to buy property with a deposit of as little as 5 per cent. It comes as first-home buyers stretched themselves to the limit financially to remain competitive in the busiest week for auctions since December 2018.
Surging markets in Sydney and Melbourne dipped slightly but remained strong over the weekend, with a preliminary auction clearance rate of 75 per cent. This was despite a 33.5 per cent week-on-week increase in the volume of properties – a total of 2610 homes – going under the hammer in Australia's capital cities. Clearance rates hit 33 per cent in Brisbane, 74 per cent in Adelaide and 47 per cent in Canberra, according to Domain.
Apparently, if you think Scott Morrison's refusal to use the budget to boost the economy is motivated by an obsession with showing up Labor by delivering a huge budget surplus, you’re quite wrong.
No, he’s sticking to the highest principles of macro-economic management (which principles Reserve Bank governor Dr Philip Lowe doesn’t seem to understand).
We now know this thanks to the first speech of the new secretary to the Treasury, Dr Steven Kennedy, made last week. He explained to Senate Estimates the long-established orthodoxy among macro-economists in the advanced economies that "short-term economic weakness or unsustainably strong growth is best responded to by monetary policy" (interest rates) not fiscal policy (government spending and taxation).
Vital water infrastructure has been delayed for years across a swathe of the state's central west due to bureaucratic bungling and personal grievances, worsening the impact of the drought, according to the findings of a damning investigation handed to the Berejiklian government.
New bores and dam upgrades were left unfinished because of personal grievances and "an inability to make necessary decisions", the Office of Local Government concluded.
The revelation is the most recent in a string of problems that has left parts of the state ill-prepared for one of the most severe droughts on record.
The investigation, conducted by the Office of Local Government's deputy secretary Tim Hurst, found there had been "a serious failure" over water security issues at the Warrumbungle Shire Council, which includes the town of Coonabarabran, including a failure to adopt a drought-management strategy.
Columnist and former adviser to Labor prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.
October 28, 2019 — 12.14am
Five days before the 1974 election, Patrick White, recently awarded our country’s first Nobel Prize for literature, spoke at a rally at the Sydney Opera House. Gough Whitlam and Jorn Utzon, that building’s architect, he said, were both “men of vision who build for the future while not losing sight of the everyday details”.
We are less likely these days to pay as much attention as we should to artists. That is a great pity, because to my mind the most incisive analysis of the last election was offered by our only other literary Nobel laureate, J.M. Coetzee. In a long piece in The New York Review of Books, focused on sharp criticism of the major parties’ refugee policies, Coetzee noted that the contest was “won and lost on arcane issues in the tax code”.
The Labor Party is currently engaged in a debate about what went wrong in that campaign. Everybody in the party has their opinions, and in two weeks we’ll get the official version, when Anthony Albanese responds to the party’s election review. So far, we’ve had some potshots, some shadowboxing around individual legacies, but the only interesting feature is how limp the debate has been. It seems at times as though MPs are arguing only because they know they should.
'It is all part of the same disease': media and other key institutions under threat
By Nick O'Malley
October 28, 2019 — 5.40pm
The prosecution of journalists, cuts to the ABC budget and the appointment of “dud” politically connected officials to roles in key agencies present an unprecedented threat to democracy in Australia.
“Media provides crucial accountability and transparency functions,” said a report by the Centre for Public Integrity, due to be released this week. “Investigative journalists often unearth wrongdoing long before any public integrity agencies investigate, for example the recent Crown Casino investigation by Nick McKenzie at The Age [and The Sydney Morning Herald], and the Four Corners investigation of police corruption in Queensland that triggered the Fitzgerald Inquiry.
"Media outlets have faced attacks in the form of centralisation of private ownership, funding cuts to public broadcasters, and potential prosecution of journalists, including News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst.”
An explosion in class action claims funded by overseas litigation backers is threatening investment and jobs in Australia, with more than $10bn in claims lodged against businesses in the last financial year.
Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox has warned that the surge in litigation presented a “clear and present danger” to the nation’s “fragile economy” amid record insurance premium increases and limited regulation to minimise class action exposure.
Business, legal and insurance figures have called on the Morrison government to urgently address the spike in class action claims in the past two years.
The Ai Group, representing the interests of more than 60,000 businesses, will release a seven-point plan on Wednesday aimed at reining in class action claims before they damage the economy.
Commonwealth Bank economist Gareth Aird believes that the September quarter CPI reading, due on Wednesday, won't be any different from the last 15 quarters of below-target core inflation outcomes.
Economists have forecast a quarter-on-quarter result of 0.5 per cent, down from 0.6 per cent in the June quarter. The year-on-year pace of inflation is expected to lift to 1.7 per cent from 1.6 per cent, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Meanwhile, the US Federal Reserve is preparing to lower the Fed funds rate once again early on Thursday (AEDT). US inflation, at 1.7 per cent, also remains stubbornly below the Fed's 2 per cent target.
Updated Oct 29, 2019 — 4.37pm, first published at 4.18pm
Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe would be the first to admit that the direct efficacy of monetary policy to stimulate growth and spending is reduced.
For example, rather than inspiring shoppers, surveys suggest the June and July rate cuts actually hurt consumer confidence as Australians worried what it implied about the state of the economy.
The Labor leader is now selling some of the same aspirational messages that Scott Morrison has just won the election with.
Oct 30, 2019 — 12.00am
Labor leader Anthony Albanese is out talking about a competitive and integrated world economy, disruption and opportunity, and about creating wealth as well as distributing it.
There was even a reference in his speech in Perth on Tuesday to Australia's deadly enemy of complacency. There was nothing at all about the plutocrats at the “the big end of town” or their “unfairness”.
This is different language from Labor, recognising that wealth in wages, taxes, and profit has to be earned first with investment and productivity. “Economic success is not inevitable,” Mr Albanese says.
His predecessor Bill Shorten thought that it was, to the extent that he made the May election into a “referendum on wages” so that people could vote themselves higher wages through new mandatory wage floors and industry pattern bargaining.
The former treasurers both suggested earlier this month that monetary policy was not useful any more after three 0.25 percentage point interest rate cuts had left the official cash rate at 0.75 per cent.
There are concerns that interest rate cuts and tax cuts have not adequately lifted consumer spending and that people were using their cheaper interest rates to pay down their mortgage.
"It's not surprising when interest rates come down people try and pay off their debt," Dr Lowe said in a question and answer session at Australian National University. "In the end though, I don't think that effects the effectiveness of monetary policy. It may mean it's just a bit delayed."
Anthony Albanese will use his first major speech as Labor leader to call on his wounded party to be "first and foremost" in "the business of creating wealth" and start talking about job opportunities in renewable industries.
In a further attempt to divorce the federal opposition from five years of attacks on business and "the top end of town", Mr Albanese will throw his support behind the mining industry in an address in Perth on Tuesday afternoon, saying Australia can cash in on Queensland's coal exports to help provide the steel to build the world's wind turbines.
While Anthony Albanese awaits the outcome of the official review into Labor's failed election campaign, he's giving a series of speeches, starting with jobs and the future of work.
Fear of missing out or FOMO has been explained as one of the primary drivers of the explosive price growth in the housing market until 2017. Can the same phenomenon be applied to investors clamouring to get into Australian growth shares?
As history shows falling interest rates enabled those infected with the FOMO virus to run the property market into bubble territory two years ago from which it then suffered a 15 per cent correction.
At its peak Australia housing was among the most expensive in the world.
Two years ago, I first wrote of my desire to become a home owner.
“Here it is, an embarrassing confession from a long-time advocate of renting: I want to own a home."
Having relished the freedom and flexibility of renting, I’d entered a stage of life where I was ready to put down roots, stop bankrolling the profits of 3M hooks and graduate to banging nails into my own walls.
I’d also finally cottoned on that our entire tax system is rigged in favour of home ownership – our most sacred tax shelter of all.
As it turned out, my FOMO-crescendo (that's my Fear Of Missing Out, in case you didn't know) coincided precisely with the peak of the most recent property price boom.
Central bankers, government treasurers and economists around the globe are puzzled by the dearth of business occurring in an ultra-low interest rate environment. Stock exchanges are concerned about the shrinking pools of listed companies. Are low rates a solution to low growth or do they help cause it?
That question has become more pertinent since central banks, including the Reserve Bank, embarked on another round of rate-cutting.
Despite the monetary stimulus, business investment globally has been weak, although mining investment and, more recently, a wave of infrastructure investment have helped sustain activity here.
Following meetings over the past week with the chief executives of the big four banks, Mr Frydenberg said that although small businesses were exempt from responsible lending standards, many had been inadvertently caught in the tightening of those standards in the wake of the Hayne Royal Commission.
That was because a lot of small business operators used the family home as security.
"We can't have small business loans caught up in responsible lending obligations,'' Mr Frydenberg told The Australian Financial Review.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has flagged new federal anti-protest laws that target environmental activists and "anarchists" who campaign against businesses, particularly those supporting the mining industry.
In a speech to be given to the Queensland Resources Council, Mr Morrison will warn that such protest activity is bad for jobs and investment.
Previewing his speech, Mr Morrison told Melbourne radio station 3AW while he respected the right to protest, some activists had gone too far.
"I really think they are starting to push the envelope where there are reports of people being spat at just because they are wearing a business shirt on their way to work," Mr Morrison said, referring to violent protests outside a mining conference in Melbourne this week.
However, he acknowledged he could not stop protests that brought cities to a standstill, such as protesters blocking intersections or gluing themselves to roads, saying they were a state law enforcement matter.
Immigration – a long-running point of domestic controversy with profound consequences for foreign policy – is a compelling Australian analogue to the issue that divided Britain.
There are strong parallels between Australian politics and the chaos witnessed in recent years in Europe and the United Kingdom.
My contention is that in Australia, immigration – a long-running point of domestic controversy with profound consequences for foreign policy – is a compelling analogue to the issue that divided Britain in 2016.
Just as Britain’s party political elite were aligned on the need for the UK to gradually develop closer relations with the European Union, immigration policy is a point of elite consensus in Australia. The major parties basically agree, with minor points of difference, that the current high rate of immigration is beneficial.
Sydney and Melbourne house prices surged through October with prices in some parts of the country now growing at their fastest rate in a decade.
CoreLogic's closely watched home value index showed house prices in Sydney jumped by 1.8 per cent last month while in Melbourne they bounced by 2.4 per cent.
National dwelling values have increased 1.2 per cent in October, the fourth consecutive month of growth since bottoming out in June.
Melbourne's house values have increased by 5.7 per cent over the past 3 months or by almost 23 per cent at an annualised rate.
After three years of inertia, a new intellectual paradigm has emerged from within the Reserve Bank of Australia. It has gradually taken form in speech after speech from the governor, Phil Lowe, and his acolytes. And its increasingly lucid logic rubbishes the concerns of critics worried about the consequences of extremely low rates, and our forecast for a sharp rise in national house prices, which is playing out right now.
Understanding this new operating model is essential for all investors and has crucial consequences for portfolio construction.
The first insight is that the need for low rates is not a temporary phenomenon, but rather a powerful long-term dynamic driven by a fundamental excess of savings over the desire to invest in productive assets.
It’s almost six months since the federal Coalition, much to its own surprise, was returned to office after winning one more seat than it did in the 2016 election. Yes, time flies when you are having fun.
Though just how much fun the government is having is a moot point. It’s all going pretty well at one level, particularly since Labor is still licking its wounds. But there are problems within the Nationals, and between the Nationals and the Liberals. And, well, not everybody has a lot to do.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has sparked a furore over free speech by vowing to draft new laws to ban protesters from boycotting companies, prompting claims his "feverish" talk would curb the rights of all Australians.
NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Nicholas Cowdery said Mr Morrison's plan was "totally contrary" to the right to freedom of expression and that existing laws could deal with unruly conduct or assault.
"Large issues such as climate change and protection of the environment encourage strong responses by citizens whose broader rights are affected," Mr Cowdery said. "Protest action may well increase if effective measures are not taken by commercial interests to address those issues. Citizens should not be criminalised for taking such action.
Condemning a protest is easy. Passing a new law to limit free speech is another matter altogether.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is being transparently political in targeting climate groups like Extinction Rebellion in the hope he can tap into a resentment against activists who disrupt everyday life.
But he is yet to prove he can act on his tough talk when his own side of politics is supposed to stand for individual liberty. Would his own party room approve a law that forbids someone organising a boycott?
Isn't it free speech to urge your fellow citizens to ban a product or boycott a store or transfer their savings to a bank that will not lend to a controversial coal mine?
The Morrison government's promised $1080 low and middle income tax boost to 4.5 million Australian taxpayers which would lift the economy has turned into a $420 bump barely noticed by the nation's shopkeepers.
Australian Tax Office figures show the average tax refund received by those who rushed to get the tax offset announced in this year's budget have received far less than expected.
In the April budget, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg unveiled a doubling of the low and middle income tax offset which he said would deliver up to $1080 to single earners and up to $2160 for dual wage families.
He said 10 million taxpayers would get some of the offset with 4.5 million getting the full amount, which the Treasurer predicted would flow quickly into the economy.
Our Hospital’s New Software Frets About My ‘Deficiencies’
But the patient records system, called Epic, has a few shortcomings of its own, including a voice that amplifies the insecurities that come with being a doctor.
By Emily Silverman, M.D.
·Nov. 1, 2019
We had been waiting for this day for years — the day our hospital in San Francisco would shed its antiquated electronic health records system in favor of a more modern alternative called Epic, which has been, or will soon be, adopted by many of the nation’s top medical centers.
Our hospital was full of strangers in turquoise T-shirts, called Epic Superusers, who provided “at the elbow support” for the staff, there to usher in the “death of the legacy system” (as the administrators’ emails put it) and the birth of a new, well, epoch.
But on a recent Monday morning when I logged into so-called Epic Hyperspace for the first time, I was greeted with a pop-up box and an urgent message: “You currently have deficiencies that are either delinquent or will become delinquent within one week. Please complete at your earliest convenience.”
I blinked. The words on my monitor were thick and black on a background of rich mustard yellow. On the left side of the message was an exclamation point inside a circle. Today was my first day using Epic. Had I already done something wrong?
I looked around. There were no turquoise people in sight — our workroom was cloistered in an older building, a long walk from the Superusers.
“You currently have deficiencies.” The words seemed harsh and punitive, and brought me back to middle school: The student dean, reading my name aloud at assembly from a list of students “in trouble” — in my case, for having hidden my crush’s backpack behind a wall in an ill-conceived attempt at flirting.
My English teacher, giving me detention — the only one of my life — when the hem of my shirt inched above my waistband as I reached for a high shelf. My mother, glaring at me in the car when I realized I had left my Samsung flip phone under my seat at the theater.
As a child, I wanted to be good. I wanted to be safe. I wanted to be loved. As an adult, this message was making me feel bad.
I have friends who work at Facebook, writing prompts, reminders, buttons. They talk about voice; they want Facebook to make its users feel a certain way. I understand this. Facebook’s voice, at times, can make me feel cared for, with joyful birthday reminders, old photos resurrected with messages of nostalgia, and words of condolences when a Friend has died.
My hospital’s “legacy” electronic health record system was too disjointed to have a singular personality. Throughout the day, one had to operate many software programs at a time, toggling between screens and tolerating maddening lags. Using it felt less like having a conversation with a helpful colleague and more like standing in a hellish echo chamber of dissonant voices. From the ’80s.
Hence the hospital’s decision to switch to Epic, commonly viewed as the least imperfect of several imperfect electronic health record systems on the market.
As of 2018, all 20 of U.S. News’s “top rated hospitals” were using Epic or had signed contracts to do so. It’s a single, centralized system, and its ubiquitousness makes it easier for doctors to see health care data from other institutions. Its graphics feel modern. It’s customizable.
But Epic has downsides. Many physicians have written about its overwhelming complexity, with a dashboard — encrusted with scores of buttons, switches, lights and levers — that feels like the cockpit of an airplane.
There are the unintelligible medical notes, filled with ragged vines of superfluous, robot-generated text. And Epic makes abrupt requests, mid-documentation, to “assign” patients diagnoses from a list of highly specific options. “Walked into lamppost, subsequent encounter.” “Headache associated with sexual activity, initial encounter.”
It’s an ask that can feel premature, granular and intrusive, especially when symptoms are evolving and clinical reasoning is in flux.
But few have written about the product’s voice. Spot an incorrect diagnosis on a patient’s list of medical problems? Good luck deleting it. Much easier to “resolve” it — a word choice that suggests an expectation of unmitigated success, as if Epic were your helicopter parent.
Checking in on a beloved patient who was hospitalized? Enter his chart and an accusatory pop-up may appear: “Deceased Patient Warning: You are entering the medical record of a deceased patient. Are you sure you want to proceed?” This can be a jarring way to hear the news. But Epic offers no condolences, no empathy, no acknowledgment that doctors, too, have beating hearts.
All I can say is thank heavens for the Dr Emily's gentle wit and extreme frustration – recognising as she does just how far we have to go to make the use of Digital Health something that is at least supportive of quality practice and also helping the understanding the patient information presented.
If the global market leader is this bad what hope for the rest of the industry?
Here is the Senate Hansard Transcript of the relevant ADHA sections.
The session reported here occurred around midday of that day. Comments after the transcript..
Part 1.
Senator GRIFF: Chair, I just have a few questions in relation to My Health Record, which is the next section, but if I can ask them now for the record because I think they will have to be taken on notice?
CHAIR: A question on notice. Okay.
Senator GRIFF: So if you're okay with me asking those questions in relation to the My Health Record?
CHAIR: Are you comfortable with that? Yes.
Senator GRIFF: The questions I have in relation to that are: what percentage of patients seen by a GP have their My Health Record accessed during consultation or immediately after? I'm not sure whether that is known, but I think that is an interesting question. I will run through them, but I don't expect you'll be able to answer all of them. The next question is: what proportion of patients who attend an emergency department have their My Health Record accessed? What proportion of Australian citizens who have a My Health Record have accessed their own record, particularly if they are accessed more than once, apart from the initial setup? What degree, if any, of data mining has taken place so far in relation to the My Health Record? It is really those first three that I'd be interested in. I don't expect that you'll be able to answer them now, but if you can that'sfantastic.
Mr Kelsey: If I could say, first of all, that we very much appreciate taking those on notice so that we can provide the most detailed data where that's available. We are aware of increasingly large numbers of patients and consumers accessing their health records. As things stand, since the expansion program was initiated at the end of February, 278,000 consumers have accessed their record for the first time and many others are accessing it on a more routine basis. I can certainly give you data on the number of hospital connections or the number of the activity within those hospitals in terms of document uploads, if that will help. But we will take, if we may, the specific questions on notice.
Senator GRIFF: So at this stage 278,000 out of 24 million, is it?
Mr Kelsey: Roughly speaking.
Senator GRIFF: Who have actually accessed their record?
Mr Kelsey: For the first time since opt-out. There are many others who are doing so, but since the point of opt-out.
Senator GRIFF: When do you think you will be able to provide those answers?
Ms McMahon: I can provide some statistics on hospital connections. We currently have 616 public hospitals and health services across the country connected to the My Health Record and 216 private hospitals and clinics also connected. In terms of volumes of documents, we currently have 4.7 million discharge summaries from hospitals in the My Health Record and a range of other things, so pathology reports, 22.41 million—a number of those come from the public health system but also the private system—and diagnostic imaging, 4.11 million reports as well. Those are the volumes.
Senator GRIFF: That's all useful, but again, as I read out the questions at the beginning, what is theproportion of patients who attended an emergency department and the like? If you could respond to those other questions on notice that would beappreciated.
Mr Kelsey:We will provide what wecan.
Part 2:
Senator O'NEILL: I look forward to that. If I can go just to a couple of quick ones on My Health Record, you told the committee previously that 2.5 million Australians opted out of the My Health Record before records were created and another 30,402 Australians cancelled their records between 22 February and 14 April 2019. Can you tell me how many Australians have cancelled their records since 14 April?
Mr Kelsey: Yes. Let me just find the cancellation figures.
Ms Beauchamp: I did table some information this morning around both opt-out and cancelled records. We've had 23,528 records cancelled since 22 February 2019. At the same time 22,129 people have opted back in since the same time as well.
Senator O'NEILL: I think we might have a couple of questions on notice but also I notice you've provided us with some data this morning that might be helpful in discerning that. If I can now go to the NHMRC IT project?
Senator ROBERTS: On the My Health Record data, the government has delayed implementation and invested vast amounts of money promoting the My Health Record to achieve its current implementation level. Has the time and extra cost been worthit?
Mr Kelsey: Currently almost all public hospital services are connected to My Health Record and where discharge summaries are being created those are being uploaded where a person doesn't withdraw their consent. We have now got to a point where well over 80 per cent of community pharmacies for the first time in Australia are uploading dispense medicine information from the My Health Record. We have got the vast majority of public pathology and radiology services uploading to the My Health Record and a very significant proportion of private radiology and pathology services uploading. This is really the first time, certainly the first time in Australia, that these kinds of data have been available to front-line clinical staff and of course the consumer so that at the point of care in real time this information can be shared. We put in place a whole series of different methodologies to evaluate the impact of My Health Record. Obviously it's early days but we are seeing very clearly from the clinical front-line very meaningful impact being achieved, particularly through access to medicines information. For example, in Royal Perth Hospital the toxicology department and the emergency department now mandate the use of My Health Record when it is triaging patients with suspected overdoses or other poison incidents so that their previous history of medication, and particularly those that have been dispensed, can be ascertained by emergency staff. That is just an example of a trend in hospitals in particular. Obviously out of hospital clinical staff are beginning to really value access to this kind of critical information at the point ofcare.
Senator ROBERTS: Presumably it would improve care and also health?
Mr Kelsey: Yes. What we're hearing is a range of improvements that are being facilitated, which range from, frankly, outcomes being improved in the emergency department because for the first time emergency physicians can see what medicines have been dispensed to a person, right through to just better coordination of care in the out of hospital environment. So people are able to be discharged into a knowing relationship with out of hospital clinicians. Care plans can be more easily developed—a range of benefits which are beginning to be realised in the Australian community. And what we look forward to doing, of course, is bringing back over the coming months more statistical evidence of that impact being realised on theground.
Senator ROBERTS: There was a breach of security in Victorian hospitals recently apparently—access to people's records. My Health Record stores a large amount of very confidential information about Australians and it would be like having one's whole life exposed if they were compromised. What are the safety precautions you've taken to make sure the information is kept confidential and, in particular, is the record stored in Australia oroverseas?
Mr Kelsey: So that I can be crystal clear about this, no health information, no information on the My Health Record, is stored overseas. It is prohibited, firstly. Secondly, the Victorian hospital issues didn't in any way affect My Health Record or the integrity of the My Health system and, thirdly, as I've had the privilege of describing this to estimates before, we have in place a series of very advanced cyber security protections for the My Health Record. I'm very happy to list some of those for the committee, but as you would imagine, we operate to the highest standards, assured and audited by other government agencies, including the Australian Signals Directorate, to that effect. There have been no instances of security breach of the My Health Record but at the same time of course there is no absolutely no complacency, and we are constantly reviewing ways to improve the cyber security protections of the My Health Record through our dedicated cybersecuritycentre.
Senator ROBERTS: What about general practitioners' records on the cloud?
Mr Kelsey: We don't operate cloud services for general practice.
Senator ROBERTS: Can people access general practitioners and then get in through there?
Mr Kelsey: No, they can't.
Senator ROBERTS: We've also heard—I don't know if it is true—that specialists aren't receiving anywhere near the same level of support to adopt the My Health Record as that provided to GPs. That was a mistake the British apparently made and it slowed down the adoption of their records system. What have you done to make sure that specialists get adequate training as well as GPs?
Mr Kelsey: Perhaps I could ask my colleague to answer that question.
Ms McMahon: Over the last three years of the agency's operation we've focused initially on general practice, public and private hospitals, pathology sector and pharmacy. This financial year we've started focusing on specialists. When we appeared before this committee in February we reported at that point that in addition to the public health system, because of course specialists do work in public hospitals and private hospitals and accessthe record that way, we had 271 medical specialist organisations in February who were directly connected. That's increased 185 per cent since our last appearance; so we now have 742 medical specialist organisations. We are also working directly with a number of software providers who service medical specialists to improve the usability of software and the way it connects and uses the My Health Record to improve the experience of those specialists in connecting to thisinformation.
Senator ROBERTS: How far do you have to go? How many agencies or how far down the track are you as a percentage of capturing your target?
Ms McMahon: In terms of the software vendors?
Senator ROBERTS: No, in terms of how many other specialists, how many other health practitioners?
Ms McMahon: I will need to provide the denominator to you on notice. We've got a number of specialists working in the public and private hospitals. In terms of them practising through their rooms, I will need to take that on notice too to find the total number.
----- End transcript.
In the first part we see Mr Kelsey simply not answering the question regarding clinical look-ups etc and then saying that ‘they will provide what they can’ when we all know that have the stats.
The fun figure was that only 1.15% of those dragooned into having a #myhr had actually accessed it. (278,000 or the 24 million or so)
There is really no hard information in part 2 other than the numbers joining and leaving the #myHR are just about evening out!
Again of course it seems hard to provide numbers.
Transparency Central the ADHA is not! Actually they are secretive, obstructive and dangerous individuals who have no idea what public service means!
