My Health Record reforms will only be useful if they (a) have patient buy-in and (b) don’t suck to use.
The plan to increase the availability of information in My Health Record via event summaries will lead to “frustration” and “underutilisation” in primary care, the RACGP warns.
In its submission to the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s consultation on sharing medicines-related information to My Health Record by default, the college of GPs said the reforms “must support the coordinating role of general practice”.
It also called for an ongoing public education campaign to ensure that patients understood the potential safety risks of restricting the information shared to their MHR.
The reforms in question were announced in January and are designed to combat doctor-shopping.
It will be delivered across two stages: the first is a new requirement for all online prescribing services to upload medicines-related information to each patient’s MHR, and the second is the creation of a National Medicines Record.
DoHDA aims to have the first component set up by the end of 2026, with commencement from 2027.
Commenting on this first component, the RACGP said it “champions healthcare consumer ownership and control” over MHR, including the ability to restrict or remove information.
At the same time, it also noted that risks like inappropriate prescribing, duplication and harmful drug interactions arise when a GP does not have access to all medicines-related information about a patient.
To balance these two factors, the RACGP recommended the government work on a long-term education campaign.
“Effective public awareness cannot be achieved through a one-off communication campaign; it requires regular, consistent engagement with patients to support understanding and informed decision-making,” the college wrote.
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The college’s major criticism of DoHDA’s plan, though, was that GP workflow was not a central consideration.
The proposal to share additional information regarding clinical prescribing context via the existing “event summary” feature in My Health Record, the RACGP said, is “not a satisfactory solution”.
Event summaries are not a typical part of routine GP clinical workflows, the college argued, therefore making it difficult to access and to discern which entries may be significant.
“The lack of seamless integration with GP clinical information systems makes it difficult to easily locate specific, up-to-date information in My Health Record, leading to frustration and potential underutilisation of the system,” the submission read.
“Furthermore, event summaries can be very verbose and written freehand with no easily visible medications recorded.”
Fully realising the benefits of the reforms must start with prioritising clinical usability and integration with existing workflows, the college said.
In turn, this means the government must strengthen its support for general practice digital infrastructure.
“There is limited value in creating standards-based, real-time interoperable data if the systems used by GPs are unable to display information in a way that supports safe, efficient clinical decision-making,” the college wrote.
The RACGP is not alone in its criticisms; the AMA put forward similar arguments in its own submission to the consultation.
