VICDOC Winter 2022 - Magazine - Page 95
KEY TAKEAWAYS
AMAV POSTSCRIPT
The Act will assist with the
fragmentation of patient health
information and improve the ability
of clinicians to start treatment with
greater efficiency and reliability.
Further, the Act brings Victoria into
line with other Australian states who
have successfully implemented health
information sharing, such as NSW,
Queensland, ACT and South Australia.
It is ultimately the responsibility
of the participating health service
to ensure information stored on
the System is accessed and used
appropriately. We recommend health
services and practitioners review
the Privacy Management Framework
to ensure they have developed
a process for regular audits and
compliance checks.
In addition, we remind
practitioners that accessing
information held on the System will
only be permitted for the purposes
of providing medical treatment.
Practitioners should therefore use
their discretion in accessing patient
records on the System for those
patients with highly sensitive health
information such as sexual health
issues, mental health issues, family
violence and child protection.
In supporting the legislation (and
opposing any attempts to amend the
legislation by allowing patients to
“opt-out” of the system, we were in
no way diminishing privacy concerns,
particularly for mental health and
reproductive health records. But the
status quo bear acknowledgement
as comparator; it is a reality that
patients’ health information is already
stored in hackable databases or
manila folders by individual health
services, and data in the government’s
model would be ring-fenced with the
strictest of protections.
It is AMA Victoria’s belief that
the Act will greatly improve the
ability to connect health information
across Victoria’s public healthcare
system, which will reduce the burden
on patients having to remember
their past medical history. This will
allow clinicians to start treatment
sooner. It will reduce the number of
unnecessary tests and investigations
and reduce the risk of medication
errors. Indeed, in an emergency
department in the early hours of the
morning- by ensuring that medical
teams quickly learn what conditions
and medications their patient has —
it could be lifesaving.
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Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
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