Ross,
Going by what you have written, this would mean that only the various
flavours of Online Claiming will be supported, as well as, presumably
secure messaging applications where a referral from a GP or other
provider to a specialist or hospital is involved. Arguably the latter
directly relates to 'Online Claiming' and Medicare's 'core business'.
This is particularly so as the use of individual certificates is
mandated for electronic referrals. If they drop that requirement, then
it won't matter so much and everyone except the Practice Management
software guys will go elsewhere.
To the extent that ArgusConnect, Medical Objects and similar programs
support electronic referrals and rely on HeSA PKI individual or location
certificates, surely they and their users would still be seen as being
within the 'core business' of Medicare? If not, someone needs to argue
the case. Or talk to the relevant shadow ministers.
For GPs to obtain location and individual certificates they have gone to
the HeSa site. The applications for certificates and online claiming
were still separate on the HeSA site as recently as last week.
Does this mean a GP will only be able to get certificates if they are
applying for Online Claiming, or haven't they thought this through that
far yet?
Greg
Ross Davey wrote:
Government Drops the Ball on Healthcare e-security
________________________________________
* *
Since the moving of Medicare Australia away from the health portfolio
into the Human Services portfolio, we have been told that support for
development, deployment and technical support for use of PKI in the
health sector has been dropped for any applications other than those
that support Medicare-related business.
I am told that Medicare Australia no longer will invest resources in
supporting the use of their PKI infrastructure for strictly
healthcare-related applications. Medicare will simply concentrate on
use of PKI for Medicare ‘core business’; which is interpreted to mean
insurance-related applications.
This leaves initiatives that have adopted HeSA PKI for security in
clinical areas out in the cold and largely unsupported both
technically and strategically.
HeSA, the organisation that established an infrastructure for
deploying PKI certificates, certificate tokens and also negotiated and
oversaw the Certification Authorities and registration process, has
been absorbed back into Medicare Australia and told to focus on ‘core
business’.
There are quite a number of initiatives around Australia that have
adopted HeSA’s PKI technology in healthcare environments on the
understanding that this would be the anointed mechanism for encrypting
health data and for applying digital signing. They now find that
unless the application is related to Medicare claiming, their
initiatives are receiving minimal support, they cant get answers to
important and urgent technical matters, and they cant be assured that
the infrastructure will continue to be provided.
--
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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