Will NEHTA changes help deliver?

The NEHTA board shake up is week old news. Unfortunately we don’t have a share price to help gauge the collective reaction. But I suspect the impact of the board changes has not improved most peoples hopes.

These are not my own feelings, but those of the e-Health industry that have seen few concrete decisions from NEHTA over the last 2.5 years. Though the agency has dismissed these claims.

NEHTA now has Peter Fleming and David Gonski on it’s board – both serious professionals in their own right.

It has also shown some promise of late with the realization that patients need records too. The National e-Health Transition Authority (NeHTA) now has a blueprint proposing an opt-in system under which patients would have a portable electronic summary of their medical records that would allow varying levels of access to select health providers.

The Federal government first promised to deliver eHealth records in 2000 as part of a ten year program. Nicola Roxon has already delayed that to at least 2012.

I stand by my previous statement that private companies are better positioned to solve this problem – despite much of Australia’s healthcare being public. In a soon to appear posting I will hopefully detail my argument.

Lithuania goes eHealth

A new Lithuanian ehealth information website has been launched to keep health professionals and members of the public informed about the development of Lithuania’s National Electronic Health System (NESS).

Lithuania has a national e-health programme jointly funded by the Lithuanian government €1.9m and the European Union €2.5m.

While they don’t plan to be finished for some years. it seems they have taken some positive steps with this website – something our NEHTA is also trying to do.

A Personal Story of Healthcare Inefficiency and the need for Vision

Today I spent the better part of my day negotiating three separate facets of the medical industry in Australia. Though this post is not about me.

As a medical student I get to see the machinations of the hospital system and know why things are done a certain way. I also work part time as a sort of consultant in the management of medical education.

If you’ve read my blog at all, you’ll know I am a real critic of our healthcare system. It’s easy to be a critic when you are in the middle of it – with no real management responsibilities. True, I don’t yet have patients lives in my hands. But this doesn’t mean I can’t comment on management issues such as poor communication, task duplication etc.

Fortunately, I also have many stories of young professional friends to go by. The reason I emphasis their youth here is that the older generation in Australia were quite happy to never question doctors. Hence I believe many doctors have developed bad habits that people in other industries could not imagine. For example, in what other place are you forced to wait 30min’s to see someone, only to be told after a quick 5 minute chat that you can’t be helped (then given a whopping bill)??

Today I spoke at length with a friend that is going through a difficult patch in life and interacting frequently with health services – most of the time with great frustration. To put you in the picture, this person is about 30, has children, has two higher degree’s and works part time – quite impressive when you also consider the burden of a fairly serious illness recently and ongoing treatment (I’m being light on the details here for privacy reasons).

This person is respectful enough of doctors not to question their expertise, but also very intelligent and deserves a good understanding of everything that will be done to them. Yet at practically every consultation and interaction with health staff, they have been left with more questions than answers and don’t really have easy access to the doctors at other times to follow these questions up.

They certainly don’t deserve to have errors within the hospital system played out in front of them – such as a doctor calling to send a script for medication they had already taken – apparently the hospital files had not been updated.

There are ongoing reviews of the health system in Australia. Many of them are reporting soon – including an independent report on Health IT by Deloitte’s. Each will make suggestions, most of which will probably be minimal adjustments.

This is understandable. Change cannot happen too quickly, particularly where large bureaucracies are involved. But until we develop a vision of the technical and management future of our healthcare system, no great changes will ever occur.

Politicians often serve us mantra’s such as ‘free quality healthcare for all Australian’s’, but few government policies are rich on detail. Lets hope the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission serves up some surprises. And let’s hope a medico political visionary arrives to lead us into a healthy future in this world of uncertainty.