Oliver wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, 18 August 2006 12:46 PM
I don't understand. Why can't you get an individual digital
certificate from HeSA? What are you lacking?
Well, VR ;-)
There is good news and bad news, my friend!
The good news is that Medicare Australia wants every provider whose
patients claim on Medicare to get digital certificates, because this
will enable Medicare to receive those claims in the most efficient way,
that is electronically. Just to make absolutely sure that, I have
phoned HeSA and confirmed with them that they will issue digital
certificates free of charge to anybody working in the health
professions, including non-VR GPs.
The bad news is that nobody apart from Medicare cares whether you have
an individual digital certificate or whether you use it, and as we have
been said in previous messages, even Medicare cares so little that it is
ignoring the fact that hundreds or thousands of doctors are sending
referrals and other clinical messages that are encrypted (which is all
that doctors care about) but which have not been signed with an
individual digital certificate.
So, in summary:
1. As a non-VR GP, you can get digital certificates from HeSA the same
as everybody else;
2. The only certificate that you may need to get is a location
certificate, rather than an individual one. (You need to remember that
if you ask people to encrypt messages to you with your individual public
key rather than your practice's location public key, nobody else in your
practice will be able to read those messages, which could have serious
legal consequences if you are away and others in your practice couldn't
read an urgent or important message about a patient.)
Oliver and colleagues,
Until earlier this year I'd formed the opinion that the use of
individual HeSa certificates, as opposed to location certificates, was
dead. HeSa and MA had made them 'optional' for its online claiming, in
their efforts to get GPs using that system, which, of course,
marginalised their distribution for other uses.
However, in March Andrew Macintyre convinced me that they do have a
role, and his Medical Objects software currently allows their use for
both signing and encrypting referrals to specialists, and for
specialists to return reports to GPs. I've tested this, it works very
easily. ArgusConnect has promised to re-enable its use of individual
keys, which they'd taken out of Argus, as they [and I suspect MA] had
previously also reached the conclusion they were dead.
Andrew has about 1500 users on the sunshine coast, which demonstrates it
can be done. Whether HeSA and MA wills settle on the dongle or smartcard
version of the certificates is unclear. Both need software installed on
a PC to work, so the card reader issue is not the only one.
The game is still alive, I believe.
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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