Senate estimates hearings and announcements From the Federal Health Minister about the PCEHR and Opt-out contradicted each other within a few days last week, suggesting that panic might be starting to set in at DoH over their ability to reboot the PECHR project. Hopes for a Turnbull/Ley led government to turnaround the snail pace on transforming […]
Senate estimates hearings and announcements From the Federal Health Minister about the PCEHR and Opt-out contradicted each other within a few days last week, suggesting that panic might be starting to set in at DoH over their ability to reboot the PECHR project.
Hopes for a Turnbull/Ley led government to turnaround the snail pace on transforming the healthcare system through improved adoption measures for the PCEHR, specifically, opt-out trials, appeared dashed last week , after Department of Health executives vacillated on the timing of opt-out trials, who would do them and where, and whether ‘innovative opt-in’, might still be the answer.
But then miraculously Federal Health Ministers Sussan Ley got things back on track through a few announcements in her press club speech earlier this week. You have to wonder what happened in the intervening days. For one thing, the opt-out trials, moved from July 2016 at the earliest in the Senate hearings, to “early 2016” and where detail was lacking on when and where and when the first trials would be held at the Senate hearing, Ley had the detail and the numbers for the first trial.
“I can announce … that all-inclusive trials of the Government’s new My Health Record will commence in early 2016 for around 1 million Australians.
The trials will be held in Far North Queensland and in the New South Wales Nepean Blue Mountains region.”
Oops. Someone must have gotten their ass kicked.
DoH special advisor Paul Madden is a likley candidate(‘special advisor’ might be what you get called when the special ‘Authority’ you run is going to be disbanded in the near future – that’s NEHTA). He told the Senate Estimates committee last week that opt-out trials wouldn’t start until July next year and there was no decision yet on where they would be held. He also said that communication about the trials wouldn’t start even until February March next year.
‘Just do something’ was the call of most commentators around the country on the issue. One comment to Dr David More’s aushealthit blog last week on the new e-Health Implementation committee announced by Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley to resuscitate the ailing PCEHR program and NEHTA said it “looks like the steering committee you create when you don’t want them to be actually steering…”
The AMA has slammed most aspects of the Government’s attempt at a reboot, in particular, the idea of press ganging GPs into the PCEHR cause through the ePIP system.
But according to the DoH officials, in the time taken to even get to the opt-out trials – albeit the ones starting in July, not “in early 2016”, the technology could change and affect all the cost structures. Would this force them to another review?
At this stage, the timetable for DoH to report back to Parliament on the success or failure of opt-out trials, and subsequent recommendations for how to implement (or not) is the first half of 2017. Perhaps that has changed as well. Ley didn’t touch on that part of the timetable.
By that time, the private sector and disruptive digital technology, including cloud-based patient management systems that are starting up in earnest, stand a good chance of beating the government to the punch on getting e-Health records up and going in a manner that is adequately ‘ubiquitous’.
Which begs the question. Why bother wasting another $1billion with a group that is flailing (and failing) before it even starts again?
David More’s view was slightly more strident: “The question is what all those who realise the PCEHR is a pile of crock are actually going to do to have DoH and NEHTA face up to the fact they have goofed and stop good money being thrown after bad.
A new realistic e-Health Strategy is needed – and not something just emitting from the DoH in Canberra. The sooner the AMA and the RACGP (among others) start to wind up the heat the better!”
