WANTED: STRONG GOVERNMENT SUPPORT ON eHEALTH

It’s now been five months since an expert review of Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) found that eHealth records were a piece of critical national infrastructure.
 
This was clearly not the outcome Minister Dutton was looking for, which might explain why it took him six months to make its findings public, and who knows how long to respond and provide any guidance as to what his government might do to advance eHealth.
 
In opposition he denounced eHealth as a “scandal” but signs the review was not delivering the result he wanted became clear in March when the minister gave a speech declaring “the government supports the principles of eHealth and the potential for it to drive greater productivity and sharing information across the health care system, particularly through electronic prescribing and paperless claiming.”
 
Precisely. But he then followed this by allocating a paltry $140.6 million to keep the eHealth system going while the government acts on the recommendations of the review.
 
It was a clear sign the government wanted merely to keep eHealth on life support while he works out how to match his pre-election rhetoric, with the shocking finding electronic health records are actually a pretty good idea.
 
Which is a great shame, because with government encouragement and support, eHealth still holds out the prospects of revolutionising health care delivery in Australia, while making the system sustainable and better for patients.
 
Denmark has taken around 20 years to get this right, but the benefits have been enormous. Every patient and doctor is now signed up. Clipboards and filing cabinets have been replaced with handheld wireless computers. Any doctor can now instantly access the full medical records of any patient, including their allergies and adverse reactions.
 
As far as eHealth is concerned the lesson is persistence pays off, a lesson clearly lost on the Coalition.
 
Australia too has been talking about eHealth for 20 years. The problem is, for much of that time we’ve had Coalition governments which haven’t taken it seriously.
 
Way back in 2003 when Tony Abbott was Health Minister he declared "Failure to establish an electronic patient record within five years, I said, would be an indictment against everyone in the system, including the Government. I hope to be judged against that somewhat rashly declared standard; not because it is likely to be fully met but because it would mean that, come next year, I remain the Health Minister!”
 
In that one paragraph Mr Abbott revealed both his contempt for the health portfolio and his failure on eHealth records.
 
No surprises then that it actually took a Labor government to establish the architecture and actually deliver an eHealth system.
 
That is not to say Labor got everything right. The review identified a number of issues that need to be tackled, chief among them how to encourage doctors and specialists to upload all their records, and persuade a lot more patients to sign up.
 
But the review’s findings were unambiguous – eHealth could save the health system $7 billion a year through fewer diagnosis, treatment and prescription errors, and in the process avoid thousands of unnecessary hospital admissions.
 
Saving lives AND improving the Budget bottom line. What government wouldn’t back this?
 
Well, a Coalition government, it seems. It’s a view not shared among health industry professionals and consumer advocates who overwhelmingly support the continuing implementation of an electronic health record for all Australians.
 
Notwithstanding the doomsayers there are, at last count, at least 1.66 million people with an eHealth record and 3,000 to 4,000 people joining every day.
 
Imagine how much better this take up rate would be with a government that actually promoted eHealth records. But sadly, as was confirmed at Senate estimates earlier this year, the government has no “immediate plans” for publicity or education campaigns to boost voluntary take-up numbers.
 
In March, when Minister Dutton was still sitting on the report, then AMA president and member of the review panel Steve Hambleton warned “eHealth is really on hold at the moment in Australia?. . . everything is waiting on clarification as to the direction.”
 
The expert review shows the PCEHR has been successful but what it now needs is a government prepared to abandon its politically driven attacks on eHealth and wholeheartedly get behind the scheme.
 
This article was first published in The Consumers Health Forum Health Voices on Monday the 3rd of November 2014.