The Following appeared today.
MEDIA RELEASE
11 August 2013
PCEHR Promotion Misleads the Public
The 'Personally-Controlled' Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) has been the subject of a media blitz by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing.
“Information on television, the print and online media and radio is designed to pitch the benefits of PCEHR system registration without fully informed consent”, said Dr Juanita Fernando, Health Informatics professional and Chair of the Health Committee of the Australian Privacy Foundation (APF).
"The APF has always strongly supported the appropriate application of information technology in the health care sector. However, the PCEHR has been designed to suit the needs of government, not patients", she said.
Patients demand a careful balance between their rights to privacy and the government's
insatiable desire to collect, control and exploit personal data.
Patients have been naturally very sceptical about the PCEHR. To overcome this, the Department has mounted an expensive advertising campaign and published many 'fact sheets'.
But these are incomplete and seriously misleading. They fail to properly inform, and hence people are being enveigled into consenting to participation in the scheme.
"Neither clinicians nor the rest of the community understand the system, let alone the full implementation details”, said Dr Juanita Fernando.
The Australian Privacy Foundation has prepared an antidote to the government's wilful misinformation.
The APF has published two FAQs:
• for Health Care Consumers, at
• for Health Care Clinicians
Contact: Dr Juanita Fernando, Juanita.Fernando@monash.edu.
----- End Release
The full release is found here:
You can also read more from a clinician perspective on this blog post.
The 2013 PCEHR Quiz for clinicians and managers
Reliable information about the issues surrounding the PCEHR is not easily accessible, unless you read the 93 pages of the PCEHR Act 2012. How good is your knowledge of the national eHealth records system and are you aware of the pitfalls and risks? Do the 2013 PCEHR Quiz to test yourself.
1. Who has access to the data in the PCEHR?
a. The consumer and their clinician(s)
b. The consumer, their clinician(s), the system operator, health care organisations, repository operators, portal operators and contracted service operators
c. The consumer, their clinician(s), and the system operator in case of emergencies
b. The consumer, their clinician(s), the system operator, health care organisations, repository operators, portal operators and contracted service operators
c. The consumer, their clinician(s), and the system operator in case of emergencies
2. The PCEHR Act 2012 allows secondary use of PCEHR data for the following purposes:
a. Public health emergencies
b. Statistical analysis of de-identified health data
c. Law enforcement purposes, health provider indemnity insurance cover purposes, research, public health purposes, and any other purpose authorised by law
b. Statistical analysis of de-identified health data
c. Law enforcement purposes, health provider indemnity insurance cover purposes, research, public health purposes, and any other purpose authorised by law
Many more questions here - as well as the answers.
This is all more than overdue. There are a lot of things that are not presently OK with the way the public and clinicians are being treated and being left relatively under-informed on what they are signing up for.
I note, in passing, that the AMA is still not all they happy as well.
Test results loaded on shaky e-health foundations
29/07/2013
The Federal Government is pushing ahead with the roll-out of extra functions for electronic health records despite concerns that it is yet to get the system’s fundamental design right.
In the face of calls from the AMA for it to focus on refining the basic functions of the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record to improve its clinical usefulness, the Government has announced the allocation of $8 million to enable patients to upload pathology and diagnostic imaging test results to their shared health summaries.
Announcing the move – which has been a long-standing element in the rollout of the e-health record system - Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said it was the “landmark next step” in the evolution of the PCEHR.
“We expect both doctors and patients will find the new functionality useful, as it will reduce the need for them to chase down results or duplicate tests,” Ms Plibersek said. “In an emergency, having this kind of information on a patient’s e-health record could save lives.”
The AMA said that although pathology and diagnostic imaging test results were important inclusions in electronic health records, the Government was yet to address fundamental problems in the design of the PCEHR that undermine its clinical usefulness.
Lots more here:
There is a long way to go in all this is my view.
David.
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