We have the following release on Friday.
Australian Health Ministers’ Conference
COMMUNIQUE
13 November 2009
National Breastfeeding Strategy endorsed and more progress on e-health and elective surgery
Health Ministers today met in Adelaide to discuss a range of issues including e-health, improving elective surgery performance, and strengthening accountability and performance reporting in the health system. The meeting was chaired by South Australian Health Minister, John Hill.
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National e-health system one step closer
Health Ministers today affirmed their commitment to the introduction in 2010 of national healthcare identifier numbers and agreed to release for further consultation draft legislation for establishing the healthcare identifiers.
Ministers considered feedback from the first phase of public consultations held in July-August 2009. Following these consultations and feedback, further work has been done on the identifiers to clarify and strengthen patient privacy. Ministers have now agreed:
· the legislative framework will limit the use of healthcare identifiers to health information management and communication purposes as part of delivering a healthcare service;
· healthcare identifiers will be underpinned by effective national privacy arrangements, protecting health information wherever it is associated with healthcare identifiers, regardless of whether the information is held by a public or private organisation;
· the Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) will have an appropriate governance framework with transparent and accountable processes;
· penalties will apply to the misuse of healthcare identifiers; and
· to review the implementation of the healthcare identifiers after a period of two years.
Healthcare Identifiers are unique numbers that will be given to all healthcare providers, healthcare organisations and healthcare consumers. These unique numbers will provide a new level of confidence when communicating patient information between the myriad of private and government healthcare providers and systems. The identifiers are an important building block for the eventual introduction of a patient controlled Individual Electronic Health Record.
The legislation to establish the Healthcare Identifiers will be introduced to the Federal Parliament in the Autumn 2010 sittings.
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The full release is found here:
Press coverage is found here:
Steps taken to safeguard health IDs
- Karen Dearne
- From: Australian IT
- November 13, 2009
AUSTRALIA's health ministers have committed to restrictions on the use of national health identity numbers, including "effective" privacy arrangements and penalties for misuse, according to a brief communique released late today.
Federal and state ministers have agreed to release draft legislation for the healthcare identifiers regime for public consultation ahead of its planned introduction to the federal parliament in the autumn 2010 sittings.
The tight timeframe means responses to the draft will likely be required during the Christmas/school holiday period, testing the resources of many largely voluntary consumer and privacy advocacy groups which have voiced concerns over aspects of the proposals this year.
Under the planned Unique Healthcare Identifier scheme, all patients will be issued with an individual health ID number linked to their existing Medicare number and card; the number, together with a person's name and date of birth, is essential for the accurate matching of health information sent across electronic systems by medical providers such as doctors, hospitals, laboratories and pharmacists.
The intention is to improve patient care and safety across the healthcare system, while the automatic collation of patient data will provide a basis for the creation of personal e-health records.
The Australian Health Ministers' Conference (AHMC) has set a mid-2010 deadline for the start of the UHI program, to be operated by Medicare, but a range of privacy and legal obstacles need to be overcome first.
Consumer and medical privacy groups have been unhappy with the handling of public consultations over the proposed legal framework for the regime to date. A discussion paper was deemed unduly limited in scope, while an initial refusal to post submissions attracted further fire.
A commitment by the National E-Health Transition Authority to release three privacy impact assessments examining aspects of the proposal also failed to defuse tensions, with the documents still not available on the organisation's website.
More here:
Fascinating stuff. If ever there was a press release where the devil will be in the detail – legislative detail no less – this is it!
As Australian IT rightly points out we have still to see the promised Privacy Impact Assessments. Indeed I suspect with what one reads from the Ministerial Statement that a new one will be required to ensure compliance with the now stated position on use and misuse of the Health Identifiers. (Certainly not as late as today Nov 15).
I hope a reasonable period is allowed to review the draft legislation and understand what implications it carries both for consumers and providers.
David.
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