Health Ministers announce progress on e-Health

The Australian Health Ministers' Conference issued a Communique today affirming their commitment to the introduction in 2010 of national healthcare identifier numbers and agreed to release for further consultation draft legislation for establishing the healthcare identifiers.

Ministers considered feedback from the first phase of public consultations held in July-August 2009. Following these consultations and feedback, further work has been done on the identifiers to clarify and strengthen patient privacy. Ministers have now agreed:

• the legislative framework will limit the use of healthcare identifiers to health information management and communication purposes as part of delivering a healthcare service;
• healthcare identifiers will be underpinned by effective national privacy arrangements, protecting health information wherever it is associated with healthcare identifiers, regardless of whether the information is held by a public or private organisation;
• the Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) will have an appropriate governance framework with transparent and accountable processes;
• penalties will apply to the misuse of healthcare identifiers; and
• to review the implementation of the healthcare identifiers after a period of two years.

According to the Communique, Healthcare Identifiers are unique numbers that will be given to all healthcare providers, healthcare organisations and healthcare consumers. These unique numbers will provide a new level of confidence when communicating patient information between the myriad of private and government healthcare providers and systems. The identifiers are considered an important building block for the eventual introduction of a patient controlled Individual Electronic Health Record.

Members are referred to the CEO's Comments in the September and November editions of the ADAVB Newsletter for further information about e-Health developments affecting dentistry.

The legislation to establish the Healthcare Identifiers will be introduced to the Federal Parliament in the Autumn 2010 sittings.