The big picture
It could be as simple as a legible prescription, or as complex as a patient-care history running across multiple states, practices, and healthcare offerings. Better records management and communication amongst health care professionals could save thousands of lives each year, not to mention the thousands of millions of dollars the government currently spends on duplicated and often unnecessary services.
The Federal Government’s HealthConnect project is often sold to consumers based on the big picture of inter-departmental and inter-hospital communication, but its starting point is within hospitals themselves.
“Until you’ve got clinical information being systematically gathered within the hospitals there’s really nothing you can pass through the HealthConnect system,” explains Warren Armitage, general manager for strategy and information for Uniting Healthcare.
Currently in the process of rolling out a clinical information management system throughout Uniting Healthcare’s five Queensland-based healthcare providers, including Brisbane’s largest private hospital the Wesley, Armitage is well aware of the challenges now faced by every healthcare institution in Australia.
“We’ve been at it for three-and-a-half years and we still don’t have widespread deployment,” Armitage says. “Digital records management represents a significant practice change for external and internal staff as well as allied-health professionals who all have to interact to get the best outcomes for the patient.”
With change management foremost in his mind, Armitage advises health providers to embark on clinical information management deployments with a long-term view, and a lot of patience. While the inter-hospital communications standards, which will underpin HealthConnect, are stipulated by the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA), healthcare providers are largely free to select applications they think best suit their requirements.
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