GPs demand PCEHR payment

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 19 October 2011 16:08

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The Royal Australian College of GPs has stepped up its demands for GPs to receive incentives to use, and contribute data to, the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records that are to be introduced from next July.

In August the RACGP issued its qualified support for the PCEHR but noted at the time that there was a need for more than one off investment in information technology, instead calling for ongoing, and properly funded, investment in data management to ensure that the information stored in PCEHRs is accurate.

But it has today warned that unless GPs are properly compensated for their efforts in using and maintaining the PCEHR it may prove to be as much of a white elephant as the UK's National Programme for IT system which is now being dismantled by the British Government.

To date almost $10 billion (6.4 billion pounds sterling) has been spent on the UK initiative. Although some elements are to be retained, the vision of an entirely integrated e-health system has now been abandoned.

The failure of the initiative has been partly blamed on the UK's top down approach which did not secure sufficient buy in from the health practitioners expected to actually use the system day to day.

Professor Claire Jackson, RACGP president, said that the big take home messages from the UK were that the electronic health records were 'used almost never by hospitals and only occasionally from the GP.' She said that in Australia to properly maintain the PCEHRs would demand a certain amount of effort by staff in doctors' offices, and as a result the RACGP would like to sit down with both the National e-health Transition Authority (Nehta) and the Federal Government to discuss the need for some form of compensation for GPs.

Professor Jackson said that the organisation was not prescriptive about how that could be achieved but said it was important to understand what was required to roll the record out and maintain it. Asked whether it could result in a Medicare number being assigned for a patient consultant involving the use of the PCEHR (which will be rolled out as an opt-in system) Professor Jackson said 'We haven't identified the means to do that,' and that determining the best approach would rely on a closer look at practice management, and the time taken to manage a PCEHR.