Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Federal Labor and Health Minister Roxon crossing a bridge too far
The Federal Minister for Health Nicola Roxon has announced a national health data base which can be accessed by hospitals, doctors, paramedics, dentists and chemists - every Australian will be assigned an individual identifying number attached to their digital medical history.
Eventually a special hi-tech Medicare card will hold an access chip/key.
Access to this data base will only allegedly be allowed with the freely-given permission of the person seeking medical treatment, dental work or a dispensed prescription.
I use the word allegedly because the voluntary nature of this data base access plan will not last more than a day or two after legislation is effected.
Public hospitals and medical practices will in short order insist that a person cannot be seen unless permission is given to access digital medical records and, as the Minister has little or no control over state area health service policy practices she will be rendered impotent.
Indeed Ms. Roxon statements to the media this week indicate that she will enable any bar an individual may have in place to be overriden at will by hospitals and ambulance services.
This scheme is in effect information acquisition and dissemination by stealth, as Ms. Roxon would be well aware that she is unable to contain the genie the Rudd Government is determined to let out of the bottle.
In fact her statement about the voluntary nature of this new health information scheme is almost a bare-faced lie.
So many Labor election promises made in the lead-up to the November 2007 election has either been inadequately legislated, so poorly funded that they are only window dressing, resulted in both new and amended policies either running on the spot or being studious delayed - now it seeks to implement a policy before the next federal election which will eventually see every medical Tom, Dick and Harry trawling though personal health information.
What is it with Labor? Don't they want a second term in federal government? Is it trying to alienate its 2007 support base because the Opposition benches are beginning to look nostalgically oh, so comfortable?
eHealth? eDisaster.
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2 comments:
I can't understand why anyone would object to this proposal. How on earth is the government supposed to deliver efficient and effective universal health care if it can't take advantage of the latest developments in IT, which are the source of most improvements in productivity and quality of delivery?
We have a public health system that is one of the best in the world, despite all the critics who seem to expect constant perfection. But if we want the state to run the health system there are compromises involved, one of which is that the state has access to lots of information about us. Expecting the state to foot the bills while individual patients make all the decisions is simply unrealistic and unreasonable.
Personally, if I'm lying unconcsious in an emergency ward somewhere I would love the attending doctors to have access to information about my health and medication from a comprehensive database. If they have to wait until I wake up and tell them, they might never find out.
Ken L. said "I can't understand why anyone would object to this proposal."
Well as someone who has worked in health and welfare systems which hold a great deal of personal information, I can.
1.People are fallible - data is entered incorrectly with wrong dates, diagnoses, test results, type of surgery performed (including my favourite, wrong internal body part listed as removed).
2. People are careless - there have been numerous reports of computer print-outs from data bases being found on public transport or improperly disposed of in landfill sites etc.
3. People are nosey - some cannot resist having a trawl through a data base they have the ability to access, for information about relatives or friends.
4. People are dishonest/corrupt - digitally stored information is sold-on for money or as a favour, as agencies like Centrelink and the Police Department have found in the past.
5. People are vengeful - information stored in digital form is sometimes leaked as payback for both persoanal and political reasons.
Personally, I'd rather no-one treating me relied on imperfect records but started mediacal assessment from a unbiased, clean slate.
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