Andrew wrote:
<snip> I strongly urge all users to avoid Microsoft products wherever
possible, but especially on database servers.
Peter.
<snip>
Which rules out any doctors running the following medical software;
Medical Director
Practix
MSS Classic
Profile
Medtech32
Pracsoft
Totalcare
Blue Chip
Shexie
Locum
RXMedical
Genie etc
So that seems to cover 90% plus of Australian doctors, about which we are
talking on this forum are we not ?
So does your comment not sound a little out of place here Peter ?
Andrew,
You're right, we've got a big problem here. But pointing that out isn't
out of place.
From a health system perspective the mess we've gotten into with lack
of standards and interoperability, and limited platform choice, is
little better than not having the system computerised at all.
Much of the original justification for government support of GP
computing was that information could be gathered that would positively
impact on the health care of the community. It hasn't happened, and
doesn't look like it will in the foreseeable future, in any meaningful way.
For some individual practices there may be tangible micro-economic
gains, for savvy GPs there are gains in productivity and quality of
clinical care, but for the many there are minimal benefits because the
learning and support overheads have been too high and beyond their
competence and vision. Many GPs are just doing scripts, letters and
getting pathology/radiology results. Without them requesting HL7
pathology, very little useful data is ending up in their databases for
any sort of potential demographic value.
For the government there has been the illusion of some progress, but
even they are recanting on that position, which is part of the reason
for NEHTA, and e-Health generally going back into the closet at the
federal level.
Withdrawal of PIP IM&T incentives would likely cause significant market
contraction, especially for small practices and those not blessed with
an in-house champion or decent commercial or Division support. Many
practices would stagnate further in their use of IT, or abandon it. The
quality of software and training/support available would then decline
further.
Medicare is still struggling to gain efficiencies from its various
online claiming modalities, the latest and greatest of which wasn't
conceived to work with practice information systems.
For Divisions, we are faced with supporting the increasing knowledge
demands on practices with ever-diminishing resources, in an environment
that appears to be inexorably fragmenting. We have to supply
de-identified diabetes and asthma data from practices from a % of our
members by mid-2008, with the prospect of this ramping up over time.
Most NSW Divisions don't have IM&T capacity any longer.
The proposal to fund a central database to make use of this data, once
collected, and to resource divisions to do this work has been declined
by the Health Department, leaving Divisions out on their own, with
minimal support from the state and federal tiers of the 'GP network'.
Even an open recognition of the scale of the problem has not been
forthcoming to date.
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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