Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog

THE absence of compulsory basic standards for electronic health records in general practice is an “unacceptable” situation and its resolution is very much overdue, according to two experts involved in collecting GP data.

In an editorial in this week’s MJA, two senior members of the Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) program, which collects information about clinical activities in general practice, have called for the urgent development of “nationally agreed standards for the electronic health record (EHR)”.

“We now have a variety of EHR systems with inconsistent structures, data elements and terminologies”, Associate Professor Helena Britt and Associate Professor Graeme Miller, director and medical director of the Family Medicine Research Centre, wrote.

They listed three negative effects caused by the absence of compulsory basic standards.

“First, it makes it extremely difficult to transfer patient data to other general practices and health providers”, they wrote.

“Second, it makes it hard for practices to change to a different EHR system because transfer of patient data to a new system, with different data structures and coding systems, is unreliable.

“Last, it makes it impossible to obtain reliable national information about the care provided to individuals and the population through passive data collection from GPs’ computers.”

See on www.mjainsight.com.au