If You Thought Australian E-Health Governance Was Working You Are Presently Wrong.

Two meetings happened last week which confirm the unresponsive mess we are in.

First we had a meeting involving DoHA, NEHTA, The Pharmacy Guild, the AMA, the TGA the MSIA and others.

They were meeting to try and sort out the now expanding mess that was mentioned in this blog found here:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/the-lack-of-organisation-in-health.html

Well, what essentially happened was that, despite it becoming clear the risks were even larger than initially thought and that more prescribed medicines than initially understood were involved, essentially no agreed plan to change the way monthly updates were provided to software vendors and thus their users were made to make the system consistent and safe. Indeed frustration that the problem had become public was expressed by some bureaucrats.

So we have more and more risks of wrong dispensing resulting from poor updates of the medication information from the PBS as vendors find themselves between their customers and the Government.

DoHA, NEHTA and the TGA should have come to the meeting with a well-considered plan as to how the issue - which everyone agrees exits - is to be fixed and quickly. Nope, no such outcome.

Second we had a wonderful example of nonsense at a recent teleconference where Standards Australia (SA) was discussing with members of the IT-14 (Health Informatics Committee) the support that would be provided for Australian Experts to travel to conferences representing us at the major Standards meetings. What was desired from the members was transparency as to the principles that were applied to the selection of who should attend.

SA proceeded to make it clear that principles existed, that they were secret and would not be changing! Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Catch 22 I reckon.

See here:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/do-you-think-standards-australia-is.html

and here:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/the-australian-e-health-standards.html

for some exciting background.

One can only hope that the Deloitte’s refresh of the 2008 National E-Health Strategy can sort the leadership and governance issues around the present situation asap and that the Government will actually listen and make the needed changes.

David.