Government to spend a further $485 million on failed $1 billion e-health record
MORE than $1 billion has been wasted on a failed patient e-health record few doctors use, now the government will spend a further $485 million trying to make it work.
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More than $1 billion has been wasted on a failed patient e-health record few doctors use, now the government will spend a further $485 million to try and make it work.
And patients who don’t want their medical records digitised and shared among medicos will now have to make a special effort to opt out of the record under changes announced in last night’s budget.
Health Minister Sussan Ley says the government will trial making the e-health record an opt out system in a bid to drive up the number of Australians who have a record.
Fewer than one in ten, or 2.1 million Australians, currently have an e-health record and only around 41,000 of the records have shared health summaries inserted by their doctor.
And a government review completed nearly 18 months ago called for the record to be switched from an opt in to an opt out system.
The government will trial such a system in the next three years and at the same time improve the technology so the records can for the first time hold records of a patient’s scans and blood and other tests.
The roll out of the record has been beset with disasters with patient medical information uploaded onto the records by the government proving incorrect in some cases.
The system identified some general practitioners as “meat inspectors”, and many chronically ill patients who managed to get their doctors to use the record found it quickly became full allowing no more medical entries because it had a limit of 1,000 entries.
The National E-health Transition Authority which spent taxpayers money on functions in glamorous five star hotels and was responsible for the failed system is to be replaced.
Originally published as Government to spend a further $485 million on failed $1 billion e-health record
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