We’d normally say an immediate no but then we read the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners’ submission to the ANAO inquiry, and decided that some organisations are worse. Rarely have we read a more self-serving, utterly clueless document in our experience. Pretty much every complaint that the college makes about the department’s handling of COVID-19 telehealth has been caused by the college itself, beginning with its claim that changing rules and requirements “have created confusion and resulted in a significant amount of additional administrative work for GPs and practice teams”.
Guys, you asked for it! The college lobbied long, hard and persistently for MBS-funded telehealth when the pandemic struck, then very quickly got upset because online “pop-up” telehealth services got in on the act. The college then demanded their exclusion allegedly due to continuity of care reasons, got their way and are now whingeing about the existing relationship requirement as being too confusing.
The college insisted that face-to-face was the gold standard and telehealth was only a stop-gap, but when GPs did the majority of appointments on the phone, insisted that it was just as good as video. The department then reduced access to level C phone items on the MBS, pretty much arguing that if a patient needs to have a 20 minute-plus consult, they need to have eye contact, so of course the college kicked up a stink. They are also now whingeing about increased oversight of telehealth items, despite the obvious grounds for rorting that formed one of the arguments against pop-up services in the first place. The AMA is similarly conflicted.
This one is another on our epic saga list, joining secure messaging interoperability and electronic medical records. We don’t see any heroes riding to the rescue soon, so we reckon add this lot to the definition of a saga as a long and complicated story to which there seems no end.
That brings us to our poll question for the week. Rather than another interminable question about telehealth funding, we’ll go back to the saga that is the ieMR roll-out in Queensland. The ieMR uses Cerner’s Millennium platform, which has been in the news through the company’s multi-billion dollarydoo sale to Oracle. It also comes as major changes have been made to Cerner’s executive team in Australia, including a new MD and state heads. Our poll question last week asked whether you thought Oracle’s plans for Cerner were realistic.
It appears you were unconvinced: 79 per cent said no while just 21 per cent were in favour.
We also asked if you thought yes, they are realistic, what will those plans bring to the table for Australia? And if not, why not? Here’s what you said.
This week, we ask:
Is five years and $300m enough to finish the ieMR roll-out in Queensland?
Vote here and click here to comment. |