Make e-health funding priority: AMA

By Karen Dearne

THE Australian Medical Association has called for priority funding for e-health adoption, saying the roll-out should start with e-prescribing and electronic sharing of essential patient information.

E-health is one of seven key areas identified for urgent action, with AMA president Andrew Pesce handing the doctors' Priority Investment Plan to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Health Minister Nicola Roxon at a meeting in Canberra.

The AMA wants the Federal Government to assume full responsibility for funding the nation's public hospitals, with the states retaining control over operations and local governance arrangements.

Dr Pesce said the time for talk was over.

"We are offering real solutions to real problems," he said.

"The AMA fully supports the roll-out of e-health initiatives in order to integrate systems, reduce fragmentation and duplication, streamline service delivery and improve quality and safety.

"Priority needs now to go to funding the infrastructure for e-health - especially electronic health records - given that the investment to date has focused on development of standards and technical specifications."

But the AMA rejects the recent National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission recommendation that patients should control their own e-health records, saying medical practitioners should control the electronic sharing of patient information between healthcare providers.

Dr Pesce flagged doctors' concerns over person-controlled health records at an e-health forum last month.

The AMA's action plan for investment includes closing the health gap for Indigenous Australians; boosting patient access to GPs and allied health services; medical training and a restoration of facilities for people with mental illness and sub-acute care.

The AMA also wants to see remote communities wired-up for e-health services such as telehealth and web-based consultations.

And it suggests a new monitoring system, Bed Watch, should be implemented to allow continuous reporting on the number of beds available in public hospitals, and to identify occupancy issues such as access block in emergency departments.

Rudd Govt to abolish patient privacy

By: Suzanne Tindal

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has slammed draft legislation brought forward by the Federal Government, which will allow it the right to access individual patients' records.
This is 'Big Brother' at its worst.
The draft, which the AMA said had been released last Thursday night before the Easter long weekend, would mean the government had the power to "require a document, extract or copy containing health information (within the definition of the Privacy ACT 1988) about an individual".
The legislation had its grounds in making it possible for the government to conduct administrative checks"This is an act of bureaucratic voyeurism that strips patients of all rights to privacy. It presses the face of government at the keyhole of every surgery in the country. Doctors will be compelled to hand over highly sensitive medical information to justify Medicare claims potentially including a patient's intimate concerns and examination findings, their test results, weight, sexual health, infections ... nothing is protected.
"Worse still, under this legislation patients don't even have the right to know that their records are being accessed. There is no compulsion to even advise patients, let alone seek their permission," Capolingua said.
"Government has no business accessing these records. This information is between the doctor and the patient, and must remain so," she concluded.
There has been a lot of attention on health record privacy in recent times with the attempts to introduce national electronic health records, as they would make private information more readily available. The government is facing the need to pass new legislation to make the introduction of an individual health identifier possible, which the National e-health Transition Authority believed would take until next year.
The office of Federal Minister for Health and Aging Nicola Roxon was unable to provide comment in time for this article.