For the faithless: a contemplation

April 5, 2012

As we head for Good Friday/Passover and the long weekend, Dr John L. Haughom’s paper on “Implementation of an electronic health record” in the British Medical Journal makes some good points: Implementing an EHR is hard. The associated cultural, process and change management obstakles make it even harder. But while the senior vice-president, clinical quality [...]

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More on the PCEHR show-stopper

April 5, 2012

My colleagues at the Medical Observer have managed to get hold of a leaked copy of the terms and conditions that, as I reported yesterday, DoHA are busily “re-articulating” after discovering – courtesy of the AMA – that they were guaranteed to kill the PCEHR stone dead. The story doesn’t actually print the terms and [...]

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AMA issues draft guide to PCEHR use

April 4, 2012

AMA president Dr Steve Hambleton suggests that while the PCEHR “appears likely to have practical clinical limitations for medical practitioners”, it could be a tool for making the patient the “senior partner” in the management of their healthcare. His comments are in the introduction to the AMA’s 26-page draft essential guide to using the shared [...]

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Some matters of linguistic subtraction and addition

April 4, 2012

As I predicted in my earlier post, DoHA has told the AMA, the RACGP and the AGPN that it will rewrite the terms and conditions medical practitioners will be required to agree to in signing up for the PCEHR. The three peak organisations were told at a meeting in Canberra yesterday that the department would [...]

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Doctors to decline PCEHR rules

April 2, 2012

I’m told that DoHA is going to be confronted with a last-minute rewrite of the proposed rules and regulations and terms and conditions governing operation of the PCEHR if it wants medical practitioners to sign on. DoHA will meet with representatives of the peak medical bodies in Canberra tomorrow to discuss the rules, but I [...]

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PCEHR confusion for GPs … and patients

March 29, 2012

Today’s piece in Medical Observer suggests that Health Minister Tanya Plibersek’s attempt to relieve what she described as “some uncertainty in the profession” with yesterday’s address to the Health-e-Nation conference on the Gold Coast fell short of its goal. GPs and doctors’ groups are no less confused about the “additional support” she outlined. This is [...]

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Model Healthcare Community goes on the road

March 28, 2012

NEHTA’s Model Healthcare Community has gone on the road to give health professionals a close up view of the way ehealth will work in their practices, and giving patients an insight into what will be available to them if they opt in to the PCEHR. It’s currently at the Health-e-Nation conference on the Gold Coast, [...]

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GPs win MBS payments for PCEHR

March 28, 2012

The final pieces seem to be falling into place for the PCEHR, with the announcement by Health Minister Tanya Plibersek this morning that GPs will be able to claim MBS payments for creating and adding patient details to the shared record. The report comes via eHealth Space and the Health-e-Nation conference on the Gold Coast. [...]

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Take an aspirin, take an app

March 28, 2012

As I await the results of a fasting blood sugar test to determine whether I have [SIGH] type 2 diabetes, I’ve been musing about the potential for mobile apps to help with managing chronic conditions like that unwelcome but increasingly common disease and hypertension. That led me to speculate on the opportunities for GPs to [...]

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eHealth: getting it wrong yet again

March 27, 2012

Another day, another complete cock-up by The Australian’s Karen Dearne. No doubt the admittedly small number of doctors who bother reading the national daily – or at least the even tinier number who believe what they read – will be irritated by M Dearne’s revelation that they “will have to enter a PIN with their [...]

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