The outcomes of the Council of Australian Government Meeting today are here:
http://www.coag.gov.au/coag_meeting_outcomes/2009-12-07/index.cfm
As far as e-Health we have:
E-Health
Delivering a safe, patient-centred e-health system is one step closer today, with COAG affirming its commitment to the introduction in 2010 of national healthcare identifier numbers and agreeing to release for further consultation draft legislation for establishing the healthcare identifiers.
Healthcare identifiers are unique numbers that will be given to all healthcare providers, healthcare organisations and healthcare consumers. The healthcare identifier will enable a person’s health information to be linked uniquely to them, no matter how many different health care providers they see. This new system will provide a new level of confidence when communicating patient information between private and government healthcare providers and systems.
COAG also 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, including limiting the use of information, clearly outlining who has access to information and providing penalties for any misuse of information.
COAG also agreed a National Partnership on e-Health, setting out the objectives and scope for the Healthcare Identifier Service to be operated by Medicare Australia, as well as relevant governance, legislative, administrative and financial arrangements. The identifiers are an important building block for the future introduction of a patient-controlled Individual Electronic Health Record.
So:
Baby steps and no IEHR for now at least, and probably forever.
This comment is a bit of a worry:
"The identifiers are an important building block for the future introduction of a patient-controlled Individual Electronic Health Record."
They are still going on with the stuff that we know is of low priority and off the agenda!
Note there is also still more work to do on privacy etc for the IHI.
The IHI etc won’t happen at any scale next year I believe. I wonder what this framework that has been agreed actually looks like? It is not clear from the communiqué.
This is, of course, all a smokescreen by Ms Roxon and Mr Rudd for having no clear health reform agenda sorted out after 2+ years in office. The NEHTA CEO said ages ago that the concept of a national EHR system delivered by Government was probably dead.
See here:
David.
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