Quote Of The Year


Sunday, December 08, 2013

There Was Some Real Excitement Regarding E-Health In Question Time In The House Of Representatives Last Week!

Last Wednesday in Question Time we had the following exchange.

Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records

Mr Burke: Madam Speaker—
Mr DUTTON: Of course, Madam Speaker.
Mr Snowdon interjecting
The SPEAKER: And the member for Lingiari will desist!
The SPEAKER: I did ask the minister to refer to—
An honourable member: He did.
The SPEAKER: Okay, fine.
Ms King interjecting
The SPEAKER: The member for Ballarat will desist.
Government members interjecting
Here is the link to the discussion.
What are we to make of this?
Why is a Liberal Member asking questions about the PCEHR?
Is the Government trying to move attention away from some of the present problems with China, Indonesia, Debt Ceiling, Spying etc. etc.
Does Mr Dutton think if someone talks for the doctors and hospitals all will be magically fixed?
Has Mr Dutton had a briefing saying the PCEHR Program is a disaster and needs to be closed and so is softening the public up for the news?
You would have to think that this level of criticism would be pretty game if you planned to keep the PCEHR as having seen it as broken as this as you would then really own both halves!
What do others think?


Anonymous said...

As mentioned in previous posts to this blog, the PCEHR is gone, gone, Gonski...

Based on all the other cost cutting measures, the PCEHR will join the ranks of failed projects in health.

Why does this occur only in the Public Sector??

Anonymous said...

It's all a bit rich this isn't it!

DOHA, NEHTA and the C'th Govt forgetting to speak to the hospitals and doctors to connect to the PCEHR??

So what exactly is being discussed at NEHTA Board meetings where DOHA and the Jurisdiction DG's are sitting around the Boardroom stewarding the expenditure of over $1B of Taxpayers money on the PCEHR?

Are they really drinking their warm milk and catching up on their naps on the Taxpayers' dime??

It would explain the obvious eHealth debacle and why it looks like the Governance machine was asleep at the wheel...

Seems more a sin of commission rather than omission as insinuated by Dutton, but either way, the incompetent inmates have been running the asylum, and time will soon tell whether they are continually allowed to do so!

Anonymous said...

Dutton wins maximum brownie points by closing it down. If he doesn't the alternative, post review, is that he inherits full responsibility for a project which can only continue to deliver major political pain.

Anonymous said...

Minister Dutton said to Tania Plibersek "You forgot to talk to the doctors and hospitals."

He really should have said - Departmental Secretary Jane Halton and her people forgot to talk to the doctors and hospitals. She should bear the full responsibility for this fiasco together with NEHTA.

Anonymous said...

Am I dreaming or didn't the topic of costings just get brought up recently in regards to the number of hospital discharge summaries being uploaded? From memory there were a couple of hundred a day going up, I'm not sure I understand how they are getting there since the former government "forgot to talk to the hospitals".

Anonymous said...

It is very clear Minister Dutton SIMPLY DOES NOT GET IT.

So I {Peter Dutton] said to the department, 'Please, we have to work harder on this.'

They said, 'Minister, it can't be done.'

I said, 'Let's apply more resources to it.'

CONCLUSION - The Minister does not get it. Let's apply more resources he says. Oh Minister, how stupid is that? They have had battalions of resources for many years and have delivered nothing of any use. What is it that you do not understand?

Anonymous said...

“I'm not sure I understand how (discharge summaries) they are getting there since the former government "forgot to talk to the hospitals".
Well in some places discharge summaries are getting up there (into the PCEHR), despite the former government talking to hospitals (and not having listened to their issues and challenges – bravo to the hospitals!). The issue here though is not about putting things up there, but about being able to access a patient’s record when they come into ED or are admitted, i.e. being able to view it through the hospital clinical system, or via the web-based clinical portal to the PCEHR. To enable this, hospitals need to have set up their clinician access rights against their organizational access hierarchy, have put in new versions of clinical software that can view the records (if such software is yet available), trained their clinicians, and have made some major changes to work practices to ensure that correct user access is maintained, and that patients have correct IHIs etc.

Anonymous said...

Let us dearly hope that the PCEHR Review Committee have secured access to and are reviewing with careful scrutiny the proposed and actual costs and benefits of:

1) PCEHR Business Case
2) Wave#1 site tender submissions
3) Wave#2 x9 site tender submissions
4) NIP tender submission
5) Benefits Realisation partner tender submission
6) Change & Adoption partner tender submission
7) All other PCEHR Grant funding recipients, their justification for funds and reported performance

Acknowledging the review committee are severely constrained for time, if they are unable to conduct this level of detailed review, their #1 Recommendation needs to be a detailed Audit and Review forthcoming to have a full accounting for the over $1B of taxpayers funds exhausted on this misadventure.

#2 Recommendation - Accenture, Deloitte, BCG and PwC are ineligible and disqualified from conducting the Audit due to their monstrous conflict of interest in having profited so greatly from this eHealth largesse!