A Totally Unrealistic Email Came Out from NEHTA Last Week. I Will Be Amazed If All This Actually Happens!

This little ripper was circulated last week.
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 2:23 PM
Subject: PIP eHealth Incentive - Pre-release webinar for the Medical Software Vendor Community - Slide pack
Dear all,
Thank you for joining our Practice Incentives Program eHealth Incentive - Pre-release webinar for the Medical Software Vendor Community.
The slide pack from yesterday’s discussion is enclosed for your review and distribution as appropriate. Please note that this document will also be posted on the NEHTA website.
As a recap, the key messages are:
-      The PIP eHealth incentive, announced in the 2012-13 budget, aims to encourage general practices to keep up to date with the latest developments in eHealth
-      The five requirements and associated compliance dates are:
o   1. Integrating Healthcare Identifiers into Electronic Practice Records - February 2013
o   2. Secure Messaging Capability - February 2013
o   3. Data Records and Clinical Coding - February 2013
o   4. Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions - February 2013
o   5. Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records - May 2013
-    The PIP eHealth Product Register is intended for Practices to check if they have compliant software
-    More information will follow shortly on how vendors can list their products on the PIP eHealth Product Register. In the meantime we encourage you to peruse the information enclosed in the slide pack.
Please do not hesitate to contact Industry@nehta.gov.au if you require further assistance.
Thank you.
NEHTA Industry Communications
----- End E-Mail.
So what we have from those people who could not deliver the National Authentication System for Health after 5 years of trying demands that - for apparently no money - suddenly all this NEHTA compliance is to appear out of thin air is slightly over six months.
Of course we know the IHI service is hardly fit for purpose and that no-one is relying on it as the sole identifier.
More amazing still there are no standards for Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions so the vendor systems has to be able to use a commercial non-NEHTA non-standard compliant provider!
Equally it is totally unclear just what coding is to be used - and on the relevant slide SNOMED is not even mentioned.
I have no idea how all this is going to play out but my suggestion would be for the system providers to say to the GPs who want to claim the very substantial payments (up to $50,000 per practice) for software compliance that the costs of our software will be ½ of the PIP payment you can claim until such time as our development costs are re-couped.
I can’t see anywhere where the same demands for compliance are being placed on the State Jurisdictions for their computer systems - or have I missed the announcement.
You can download the amazing document from here:
The NEHRS can be months late but it seems the private sector has to fit in with nonsense deadlines and work through the holiday period in January to boot.
David.

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