Health submits MHR sharing law to Congress
Australian Health Minister Mark Butler will introduce legislation next month in November that would require sharing of medical images to My Health Record (MHR) by default.
In early May, Minister Butler announced this requirement as one of the recommendations of the Medicare Enhancement Task Force.
Although progress has been made in sharing pathological and diagnostic images, about a third of medical image reports are uploaded to the MHR, which is “still too low and too late”.
Minister Butler said at a recent press conference: “The ‘Sharing by Default’ Bill will be tabled in Parliament next month…We hope to have it passed and implemented by the middle of next year.”
“To show we are serious, the law will include penalties for companies that don’t share,” he added.
Minister Butler gave one example: Medicare payments to a clinic could be withheld if the clinic does not upload patient test results or scans. “It’s very simple,” he stressed.
Requires CDIO
The Australian Department of Health and Aged Care is seeking a Chief Digital Information Officer.
The department said in its LinkedIn job posting that the position will “help shape and drive the end-to-end digital strategy across the department,” which includes modernizing the department’s digital ecosystem. .
In addition, the CDIO’s role will be to lead IT projects across the two ICT departments and advise department executives on ICT strategy, ICT delivery and digital transformation.
Queensland Health digitizes PRM and staff survey collection
Queensland Health will introduce a digital platform across hospitals and health services to manage the collection and analysis of patient-reported measures (PRMs) and staff surveys on patient safety culture.
The company recently signed an agreement with New Zealand-based The Clinician to deploy Zedoc, an off-the-shelf application that acts as a single system to collect and analyze PRM and PSC data in near real-time.
This upcoming rollout follows recent rollouts of the PRM platform in South Australia and Singapore.
