Oliver wrote:
Greg, I think that if we looked at what is actually happening around Australia,
many GPs and specialists are simply politely ignoring Medicare Australia's wish
for electronic referrals to be signed with individual digital certificates, and
are just getting on the with the job of caring for patients, as Duncan's group
is doing. A local specialist told me just the other day that his group is
doing exactly this - they are accepting referrals without digital signatures
and using them for Medicare benefits purposes.
It sounds to me that the system used by Duncan's group of specialists provides
reasonable evidence that a referral was made. I believe that Medicare
Australia would not and will not dare to try to prosecute any specialist who
used such a referral to issue an account which can be used by the patient for
the higher Medicare benefits payable for a referred service, because it would
be howled down in public by the whole profession as obstructing the delivery of
health care with inappropriate and unworkable bureaucratic rules. It's a bit
like the Berlin wall - suddenly, just by a kind of mass civil disobedience the
whole thing (in this case, digital signing) is seen as irrelevant and
unnecessary and everybody just gets on with doing the job that needs to be done.
Oliver,
It's not mass civil disobedience until it's out in the open.
Either they don't know it's happening, or they are choosing to ignore
while everyone keeps quiet and no loss of face is involved for them.
In fact, at the moment it's just possibly fraud on the part of the
practitioners who are involved. The way that DoHA treated Western Sydney
DGP comes to mind, with it's accusations, as yet untested, of fraud. I
expect it will be a cold day in hell before those allegations get tested
in court.
If you believe in taking the wall down, someone with a death wish must
either offer themselves up as a test case, or else you all stand up and
tell them to go to hell.
Then it would be mass civil disobedience, and you'd probably win.
95% of bureaucratic inertia is either self-interest or fear of loss of face.
Greg
--
Greg Twyford
Information Management & Technology Program Officer
Canterbury Division of General Practice
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph.: 02 9787 9033
Fax: 02 9787 9200
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