Is This The Catalyst We Need To See A Real Change In Australian E-Health or Is It Doomed?

As I type NEHTA Clinical Leads are resigning in droves. To date I believe up to 10 have gone, including many of the most sensible and concerned clinical e-Health experts in the country. Even the money offered by NEHTA could not not keep them in the fold - as they knew it was not a supportable program in the long term and they are probably tired from trying.

What this tells us is pretty clear. NEHTA and DoHA have comprehensively failed to properly engage those who were meant to be using the NEHRS / PCEHR. These are the people who were meant to encourage their colleagues to engage with and use the system and now they have bailed out. It seems they are in no doubt the system is a lemon and those are paying staff to have the ill-informed to sign up are just out of their mind.

If ever there was a time to conduct a full root and branch review - including a performance audit of NEHTA and the DoHA e-Health Branch - it is now! If we don’t make a dramatic mid-course correction very soon it will be a decade before anyone is game to give e-Health another go - and that would be a loss to the total health system I believe.

It is looking like the PCEHR has been an avoidable billion dollar disaster and that had the recommendations of the Boston Consulting Group (2007) and Deloittes (2008) been followed we would not have wound up here.

NEHTA and DoHA have a lot to answer for I believe. I wonder will anyone be ever called to account?

David.