Senate Estimates has just had a session reviewing the Department of Health. One of the topics was eHealth and the Personally Controlled eHealth Record. (see link to transcript, below)
The Federal Health Minister, the Hon Peter Dutton, is quoted as saying: “While the previous Coalition government laid the foundations for ehealth by getting computers into doctors’ practices, Labor comprehensively messed up the next stage and has wasted over a billion dollars in its failed attempt at the second phase - moving to personal electronic health records” Meanwhile, this is from the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia' web site "Minister Fiona Nash, the Commonwealth Government’s Assistant Minister for Health has decided not to continue ADCA's funding. This includes core funding, along with all project funding, effective immediately. Minister Nash's decision ignores previous undertakings and commitment provided to ADCA in April 2013 about ongoing funding for ADCA to 2015. ADCA was informed of this late yesterday, and was advised it was part of the government’s budget deficit reduction strategy" It is reported that the Council has operated since 1966 on an annual budget of $1.6 million provided by the Federal Health Department. The on going cost to the government of the maintenance of the PCEHR is (according to the senate transcript) roughly "1.5 million a month" This is only a fraction of the cost of the PCEHR, which has delivered not a single health outcome. What kind of priorities does this government have? At the very worst they could have waited until the PCEHR review reported in December before axing the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council to save a miserable $150,000 per month. This government has been in office for a very short period of time, but the evidence is already mounting that they don't give a stuff about evidence. They seem to be ideologically driven. They have decided that cloud is the best solution and will be putting pressure on governments to adopt as much of it as possible. Yet another technology driven policy. The Senate Estimates transcript is here http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;db=COMMITTEES;id=committees%2Festimate%2Ffdbc4df4-3e21-4c80-a905-44b3e703b991%2F0008;query=Id%3A%22committees%2Festimate%2Ffdbc4df4-3e21-4c80-a905-44b3e703b991%2F0000%22 -- Regards brd Bernard Robertson-Dunn Sydney Australia email: [email protected] web: www.drbrd.com web: www.problemsfirst.com Blog: www.problemsfirst.com/blog _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
