E-health scheme moves slowly
Less than 1% of the nation’s health practitioners have signed up to the $1 billion e-health scheme aimed at providing patients with electronic records of their conditions, test results and medicines after going live last July.
Less than 1% of the nation’s health practitioners have signed up to the $1 billion e-health scheme aimed at providing patients with electronic records of their conditions, test results and medicines after going live last July.
The 56,000 patients who have registered for a record are reportedly getting nothing because doctors can’t yet upload their health details.
Health Department and National e-Health Transition Authority executives told a Senate estimates committee that 90% of GP software providers had now incorporated the Personally Controlled e-Health (PCEHR) into their software and doctors should be able to use the system.
Nearly 1,500 health providers had registered to use the record.
Opposition primary health care spokesman, Dr Andrew Southcott, said there were over 560,000 health practitioners in Australia, so this amounted to less than 1% of practitioners.
The government had forecast that 500,000 patients would sign up for a record in the first year but eight months later just 10% of that target had been reached.
