Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Monday, July 19, 2010

What an Excellent Idea! – A Long Overdue Intervention in Australian E-Health.

I spotted this a few days ago

E-Health, Gershon face progress audit

By Luke Hopewell, ZDNet.com.au on July 16th, 2010

The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has flagged possible audits into the Federal Government's progress on e-health and the implementation of the Gershon Review recommendations.

The office's 2010/11 work report, released today, contains over 130 pages of current and proposed government audits.

It mentions a possible audit of the Department of Health and Ageing's national e-health implementation scheme to investigate management and co-ordination strategies used in deploying e-health in Australia.

In the 20010/11 budget, the Rudd Government made a hefty financial commitment to the implementation of e-health records in Australia, allocating $466.6 million to the scheme. Earlier this month, Health Minister Nicola Roxon laid out a "roadmap to reform" for the next two years, providing an overview of the national e-health deployment plan.

More here:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/e-health-gershon-face-progress-audit-339304592.htm

A bit of checking found that few days ago the Australian National Audit Office published their draft work program for 2010-11.

The full document can be found here:

http://www.anao.gov.au/uploads/documents/2010_Audit_Work_Program1.pdf

The document title is as follows.

Australian National AUDIT Office

AUDIT WORK PROGRAM JULY 2010

Where is gets really interesting is in the proposals for some audits that are still not locked in but planned for next year.

There are two that would make a riveting read.

On Page 73 we read.

National E-Health Implementation

In the 2009−10 budget, the Australian Government committed $57 million to E-Health to facilitate the transition of paper-based clinical record keeping to electronic means for better information exchange to deliver safer, more efficient, better quality healthcare.

Over the period July 2009 to June 2012, the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) will deliver key components of the National E-Health Strategy, endorsed by Australian Health Ministers in late 2008. The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has agreed to provide $208 million to NEHTA, with 50 per cent funded by the Commonwealth and the remainder by the states and territories under the COAG funding formula.

An audit would examine DoHA’s management and co-ordination of E-Health developments within DoHA and with state/territory governments.

And this would be fun also

Page 84

Medicare Australia’s Role in the Development of the Unique Healthcare Identifier (UHI) Service

The provision of modern health care requires a greater sharing of health information between practitioners. The Unique Healthcare Identifier (UHI) will identify patients, practitioners and organisations involved in health care across Australia, and provide assurance regarding the identity of health records being communicated electronically.

In December 2007, the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) signed a two-year, $51.6 million contract with Medicare Australia to design, build and test the UHI Service, which was to be delivered in December 2009.

An audit would examine Medicare Australia’s role in the development and delivery of the UHI Service, including the management of the contract with NEHTA.

----- End Quotes.

There is really little to say about this other than I would really look forward to highly constructive audits that might improve things a little!

I wonder who suggested these audits to the ANAO?

David.

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