Editorial

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Welcome to the May 2012 homepage edition of i2P-Information to Pharmacists. Rollo Manning has been having some time out having staples removed from the site of his open heart surgery.He is now at home recuperating in Darwin, having arrived home last Friday, beating a cold and hasty retreat from Canberra.We all wish him a speedy recovery and hopefully, he will be fit enough to contribute by next month.
This month, Pharmedia discusses the toll that is taken when someone complains about you to an authority without good cause. Well, the good news is that you can now take action to protect yourself if such a complaint is made, and that may even include action for defamation. Read about a recent case involving two doctors, with Mark Coleman drawing on personal experience to illustrate.

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Is eHealth critical to navigating the world of primary care?

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Dr Ian Colclough articles by this author...

Dr Ian Colclough is an independent consultant well versed in the politics, vagaries and complexities of the health care industry. He has over 35 years experience in health informatics in a career spanning medical practice, public hospital administration, business development, market analysis, health software research and development, and strategic and tactical sales and marketing in the corporate health and ICT sectors in Australia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. Vision - Strategy - Execution - Innovation Integrated ehealth Strategies & Market Development

Primary health care reform is firmly on the political agenda. For reforms to succeed they must be underpinned by the successful deployment of ehealth; absolutely.
The last decade has witnessed a major lost opportunity for ehealth in Primary Care. Many hundreds of millions of dollars have been wasted on unrealistically ambitious and poorly managed ehealth projects; many of which have failed.
Aptly named Primary Health Care Organisations (PHCO), recently inappropriately renamed ‘Medicare Locals’, will be the centre point of the reform process. Consequently a palpable sense of urgency has developed around ehealth as its central role in the health reform process becomes increasingly apparent to politicians and bureaucrats.

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However, in order to move forward from where we are today it is essential that we step back and apply some serious deep new thinking to the task at hand to ensure the failures of years past are not repeated.

The long term goal for Primary Care is the provision of an integrated (personal) electronic health record which can facilitate care coordination, chronic disease and medication management, and navigation throughout the health system.

A functionally robust technology footprint, which links the consumer with some key service providers, is an essential precursor to achieving widespread integration of the entire Primary Care sector which lies “beyond the hospitals’ walls”.

This is a formidable undertaking and community support is vital for its success.

The way forward lies in establishing an environment which empowers multiple software vendors to work collaboratively. Although the political and organisational issues pose significant impediments to progress they can be overcome with informed, competent, leadership, careful nurturing of software developers, and an appropriate environment conducive to attaining the long term goal; all underpinned by adequate, stable, funding.

In essence, funding mechanisms employed should be focussed on driving, nurturing, facilitating, motivating, and supporting all participants and stakeholders to achieve the goals and objectives for a comprehensive, integrated, interoperable, Primary Care environment.

Central to achieving this goal is an effective vendor and service provider engagement strategy which is designed to:

• drive the vendors

• create competition

• motivate the consumer

• support the health service providers

• deliver short, medium and long term results.

Unfortunately, over the past decade the Department of Health and Ageing [DoHA] and the National eHealth Transition Authority [NeHTA] have failed to demonstrate sufficient understanding of what is required to engage the vendor community, and how to sculpture an environment which is conducive to the integration of a variety of interoperable software applications which service a multitude of agencies in the Primary Care sector. This has been the major impediment to progress.

The future of quality health care in Australia is at the cross roads. Across the bureaucracy people have moved, jobs have changed and corporate memory has atrophied. This increases the likelihood that past mistakes will be repeated and this must be avoided at all cost.

A bright light is shining on Primary Care. The new health service delivery model is on the drawing boards. It is too early to predict whether or not a better, more efficient, integrated and well coordinated health system (albeit with an ‘individual-controlled’ personal electronic health record at the core of the system) will emerge from these reforms. Politics, money, power, control, compromise, altruism and greed will all contribute to the end result.

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