WA clinicians are using My Health Record to provide better continuity of care
Published 17 December 2020
Western Australian healthcare providers are continuing to increase their use of My Health Record, with more than 56,000 views in October.
With the graph still on a steep upward trend, it is clear that clinicians are embracing My Health Record as a vital tool in providing clinical care.
Chief Clinical Information Officer and Emergency Physician Professor Peter Sprivulis said WA Health clinicians are demonstrating with their clicks the value of My Health Record in providing them with health information that is otherwise often difficult, if not impossible, to access by other means.
“The comprehensive picture of clinical issues managed by community providers, patients' medication usage and recent imaging and investigation results all add up to better informed and therefore safer, better quality clinical decision making,” he said.
Uploads to My Health Records in WA in October include 21,500 discharge summaries, 590,000 public and GP-referred pathology reports, 54,000 diagnostic imaging reports and 52 Goals of Care documents.
7,500 specialist letters were uploaded by WA Health in October, with this expected to have increased at least four-fold since, with the uploading rolled out to other key major hospitals.
Dr John van Bockxmeer is a WA Country Health Service clinician working in the emergency department of Hedland Health Campus. Hedland is one of the three communities who are participating in the Agency’s Communities of Excellence program.
The program is a national initiative to embed digital health capabilities across targeted communities and use the learnings from these fully connected communities to create a toolkit to enable scalable replication across the country.
Dr van Bockxmeer said My Health Record is a vital part of Australia's digital health transformation.
“I'm thrilled to see local partnerships promoting uptake in regional Western Australia,” he said.
“Working as a clinician at the Hedland Health Campus, I find My Health Record integration helps us work with patients to make the most informed decisions about their care.”
Assistant Senior Medical Officer, Hedland Health Campus, Dr Justin Withnall, said that thanks to the town’s Community of Excellence program, the volume of data being uploaded to My Health Record had increased dramatically.
“This has had a commensurate effect on its utility in clinical practice and has substantially reduced the amount of time spent chasing up information,” he said.
“In the rural setting, having a central repository of specialist letters, reports, medicine history and discharge summaries has proven to be invaluable in the management of many of my patients. This is particularly the case with our itinerant clients who receive care from many providers across different districts and services. It helps to keep everyone on the same page.”
Agency General Manager of Strategic Projects and Delivery, Travis Hodgson, said the Community of Excellence program being run in Hedland was connecting healthcare providers and consumers in a new and revolutionary way.
“From My Health Record to telehealth and electronic prescriptions, digital delivery is making a real difference in people’s lives and health outcomes,” he said.
“This is the way of the future.”
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About the Australian Digital Health Agency
The Agency is tasked with improving health outcomes for all Australians through the delivery of digital healthcare systems, and implementing Australia’s National Digital Health Strategy – Safe, Seamless, and Secure: evolving health and care to meet the needs of modern Australia in collaboration with partners across the community. The Agency is the System Operator of My Health Record, and provides leadership, coordination, and delivery of a collaborative and innovative approach to utilising technology to support and enhance a clinically safe and connected national health system. These improvements will give individuals more control of their health and their health information, and support healthcare providers to deliver informed healthcare through access to current clinical and treatment information. Further information: www.digitalhealth.gov.au.