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NEWS! 11 November 2011 An interesting paper has been published recently. It is called "Citizens, patients and policy: a challenge for Australia’s national electronic health record" by Christopher Morris Showell. Click here if you wish to read it for yourself. 7 November 2011 Early last month a really interesting white paper was published, sponsored by FairWarning, UK. The paper is called "UK: How Privacy Considerations Drive Patient Decisions and Impact Patient Care Outcomes:Trust in the confidentiality of medical records influences when, where, who and what kind of medical treatment is delivered to patients". Click here to read the full report. Excerpt below: " Purpose of the Study and Executive Overview Report In September 2011, FairWarning® commissioned New London Consulting to develop a survey of United Kingdom patients of care providers to determine how patient privacy considerations impact the actual delivery of healthcare and to what degree patients believed healthcare executives and managers should be held accountable for healthcare privacy protections and breaches. The survey was designed to garner a baseline understanding of patient beliefs relative to a care providers’ legal, ethical and moral responsibility to protect patient privacy. More importantly, the survey sought to measure how privacy considerations affect patient behaviours and decisions and influence patient care outcomes. The survey was conducted using an online platform. Survey invitations were sent to more than 9,349 patients across the United Kingdom. Invitations to participate were sent to residents of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The survey resulted in responses from participants of varying race, educational level, economic class, age and gender. The survey invitation resulted in participation of 1001 respondents. The survey was live for approximately 9 days... " Click here to continue. The group earlier published a white paper reviewing the US situation too. Click here to read the full report. Excerpt below: " Purpose of the Study and Executive Overview Report In mid 2011, FairWarning® commissioned New London Consulting to develop a survey of U.S. consumers, or patients, of care providers to determine how patient privacy considerations impact the actual delivery of healthcare. The survey was designed garner a baseline understanding of patient beliefs relative to a care providers’ legal, ethical and moral responsibility to protect patient privacy. More importantly, the survey sought to measure how privacy considerations affect patient behaviors and decisions and influence patient care outcomes. The survey was conducted using an online platform. Survey invitations were sent to more than 10,000 consumers across the United States. Invitations to participate were sent to a population that mirrors U.S. census demographics relative to race, economic class, age and gender. The survey invitation resulted in participation of 1265 respondents. The survey was live for approximately 120 days. The full survey methodology is detailed in Appendix 1. Of special note, 59.6 percent of respondents were women. According to a U.S. Department of Labor report, women make 80 percent of the healthcare decisions for their families. Statistically, responses garnered in this survey approximates an accurate picture of what influences the decision making process relative to healthcare and where and from whom medical treatment is delivered to the household... " Click here to continue reading. 27 October 2011 Submissions about the exposure draft PCEHR Bill 2011 (PCEHR Draft Bill) and exposure draft PCEHR (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2011 are due tomorrow. Historically, the Department of Health and Ageing has sometimes been a little slow to publish these so we will link to any submissions published on the Internet as we locate them for your information. Click on the Exposure Bills menu item to the left of this page over the next few days to review these. Happy reading :) 10 October 2011 Additional comment from Coalition members Minister Roxon criticises privacy supporters for having a "borderline obsession" over risk: what a pity the Minister demonstrates so little concern for protecting people's private health records and personal information.
She apparently doesn't understand that "new technology" has revealed people's private bank details, credit card information, computer passwords and other private information to the entire world when not properly safeguarded. 10 October 2011"... bordeline obsession ... " Last week Minister Roxon characterized feedback from the Australian Privacy Foundation (APF) and other computer experts (http://www.abc.net.au/news/ Comments from the ABC report are concerning for several reasons. Firstly, as the submissions and feedback from the APF (http://www.privacy.org.au/) and other computer experts indicate, all community groups want to see the effective use of information technology for health. Community groups have and are learning from overseas experience, both failures and successes. There is no evidence to support the notion that Australian government authorities are doing likewise. Secondly, it is a logical fallacy to assume the proposed Australian Personally Controlled Electronic Health (PCEHR) system equates to e-health more generally. E-Health implementations existed across Australia before plans to implement a PCEHR and will continue to exist regardless of the fate of the proposed system. Thirdly, as Minister Roxon points out in the ABC report, paper records, including print outs of computer records, are generally held to be less secure than well implemented electronic record systems. Yet there is no publicly available evidence to suggest that government authorities have ever chastised or penalised health professionals for any breach of patient data regardless of whether the breaches occurred on paper or in a digital format. Fourthly, proposed PCEHR legislation permits health organisations to download and print patient information from the system at will. The proposed PCEHR legislation protects public employees from disciplinary action in regard to breaches of patient privacy. Under proposed legislation, "accidental" data privacy breaches are not subject to any of the penalties outlined in the draft legislation. The PCEHR system provides no additional privacy protections for patients than those currently existing in health privacy legislation and might even diminish these. In effect, these alleged protections embodied in the PCEHR legislation do not function at all (see point above). In short, the current proposed PCEHR legislation and Concept of Operations do not logically protect information security and privacy at all. Fourthly, the contractors the government have employed, including those acting as members of the community in promotional videos and on websites, through the Department of Human Services ( http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/home) and the National E-Health Transition Authority ( http://www.nehta.gov.au/about- Finally, expert volunteers working on submissions and feedback to the Minister and Senior Health Officials hope these will be read and, in this particular instance, that the expertise they offer will support the introduction of an effective Australian PCEHR system. Senator Roxon's public comments aired on the ABC last week are regrettable and as members of the Australian community, we respectfully ask her to think more fully about her comments with respect to organisations with public benefit in mind and far more expertise than many. 8 October 2011Update underway and will be posted next week :) |
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