Health goes to Parliament for MHR sharing law
Australian Health Minister Mark Butler plans to introduce a piece of legislation next November that would mandate standard sharing of medical images via My Health Record (MHR).
Earlier In May, Secretary Butler presented this requirement, one of the recommendations of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce.
While progress is being made in sharing pathology and diagnostic images – around a third of medical imaging reports are now uploaded to MHR – this is “still too low and too slow”.
“The ‘standard sharing’ legislation will be introduced to Parliament next month… I would like to see the laws passed and introduced by the middle of next year,” Minister Butler said at a recent press conference.
“To show we mean business, the laws will include consequences for companies that don’t share,” he added.
Giving an example, Secretary Butler said Medicare payments to clinics could be withheld if they do not upload a patient’s test result or scan. “It’s that simple,” he emphasized.
CDIO wanted
The Australian Department of Health and Aged Care is seeking a Chief Digital Information Officer.
In a job posting on LinkedIn, the department says the position will “shape and help drive a department-wide, end-to-end digital strategy” that includes modernizing the department’s digital ecosystem.
In addition, the CDIO role will lead IT projects in two IT divisions and advise the department’s executives on IT strategy, IT delivery and digital transformation.
Queensland Health is digitizing its PRM and workforce survey collection
Queensland Health will implement a digital platform across hospitals and healthcare services to manage the collection and analysis of patient-reported measurement (PRM) and staff surveys on patient safety culture.
Recently, New Zealand-based The Clinician was awarded a contract to implement the turnkey application Zedoc, which acts as a single system for collecting and analyzing PRMs and PSC data in near real-time.
This upcoming implementation follows recent implementations of the PRM platform South Australia and Singapore.