The Coalition Is Planning A PCEHR Review - What Should We See From The Review.

As I mentioned last week we found this late in the week from Coalition Policy.

In the full .pdf of the policy a review of the PCEHR is mentioned.

Page 15:

"Health professionals will be increasingly reliant on effective e-health tools to better
coordinate care, particularly for patients with complex health conditions.  Unfortunately, the Labor Government has failed to deliver on its Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR).

Despite the $1 billion price tag, only 4,000 records are reported to be in existence. In recent weeks, the clinical advisers for Labor's e-health record program have quit  en masse, leaving the Federal Government's flagship programme floundering with virtually no clinical oversight.

If elected, the Coalition will undertake a comprehensive assessment of the true status of the PCEHR implementation. In government, the Coalition implemented successful incentives to computerise general practice and will continue to provide strong in principle support for a shared electronic health record for patients. The Coalition will again work with health professions and industry to prioritise implementation following a full assessment of the current situation."

 Here is the link.

http://tonyabbott.com.au/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=DRbioW4-J0w%3d&tabid=86

For me the review has to address the following.

First we need to know just where the implementation of the PCEHR is actually up to and just what levels of usage it is seeing - separate from the spin being put out by DoHA. We also need to understand where all the money has gone, who has profited and if there has been any issues like have been seen with the Qld Health payroll procurement and implementation.

Second we need a serious evidence based review of the options for having what has been built actually be used better and to have it actually achieve the desired health and clinical - and not technical outcomes. My feeling if this is done it will be concluded that the design of PCEHR is fatally flawed from both a clinical and patient utility point of view and needs a pretty large scale re-design. The opportunity cost of not correcting course and starting to invest in approaches that are more likely to work and deliver the Health Sector benefits we need is huge I believe.

Third - with a clear idea of what might work and where our gaps are - we need to plan how we migrate from where we are to where we need to be. The plan needs to be stakeholder and benefits focussed.

Lastly we really need to come up with an approach to the leadership and governance of the e-Health domain that much better manages the power of government, vendor needs for profit and opportunity, consumer requirements and the clinician’s need for quality and safe Health-IT. We need to properly balance all these interests while ensuring proper accountability on the part of each stakeholder.

A Clayton’s review is really not an option as all that will result in is good money being thrown after bad. Of course, the review needs to be made fully public

Remember e-Health is not intrinsically a good. To make a difference it has to be done well with co-operation and commitment from all.

David.