Consultation NEHTA Style - Long Lists of Participants But Not Many Answers!

Last week, just a day or so before submissions on the PCEHR were due, we had two consultation reports released. These were sent to stakeholders and today CHIK has received permission to make them available.

Two documents were made available to those groups consulted last week - but were not made available publicly.

As mentioned they are now accessible and have been made available from CHIK servers.

1. The PCEHR Consultation Report January 2011 to April 2011

http://www.chik.com.au/files/NEHTA/PCEHR_ConsultationJan_April2011.pdf

2. Questions and Responses - from the roundtables held during March.

http://www.chik.com.au/files/NEHTA/PCEHR_Q&A.pdf

I was lucky enough to be sent copies late last week, and have has some time to browse them.

Sadly, in usual NEHTA style, we have many issues raised but very, very few issues actually resolved.

Typical of the sort of responses is the following.

NEHTA PCEHR Q&A page 8

Q - How can we be confident that the information in a PCEHR is correct and accurate at the time?

A - This is a challenging issue. The accuracy and reliability of information in any health record must be taken into account, in the context of other sources of information, including directly from the patient. However, this is largely dependent on the quality of information provided by healthcare organisations. Experience with shared records in Australia and globally indicate that the quality may be not be high initially, but improves rapidly with the introduction of the system due to its exposure and “peer-review”. The concept of having a nominated provider to manage the information going into the Shared Health Summary will help to ensure that information is up to date and relevant and to highlight important information needed for the ongoing care of the patient.

All one can conclude is that the whole PCEHR idea is just a very early work in progress.

Working out how the quality of information held in a shared record can be fit for purpose is quite fundamental and to be this vague at this point, is really quite alarming!

Enjoy browsing, if only to the frustrated regarding just how little is actually sorted out!

David.