It was touted as being a perfect fit with the grey nomad lifestyle … but the enthusiasm shown towards the advent of electronic medical records has been far from overwhelming.
And even those travellers who have opted to voluntarily sign up for the system have not been universally impressed.
“I thought having such a tool would be useful … until I got sick in the bush,” said Dave. “I told the community nurse I had an electronic medical record that could be accessed online, to which she replied: ‘It would be nice to have a computer and even nicer to have an internet connection’.”
Another traveller, Colin, was equally underwhelmed.
“We signed up about two years back but so far we haven’t found a single medical professional who uses the system,” he said.
That is not to say that many travellers have not benefited from having e-health records, and the Federal Government insists that, as the rollout of the system continues, it will improve and grey nomads will be among the groups who could gain the most.
And it seems that that rollout is now going to continue apace following a trial which required residents in Northern Queensland and the Nepean Blue Mountains to ‘opt out’ of the system rather than ‘opting in’.
The Department of Health has declared the trial – in which 971,000 individuals were automatically signed up for a My Health Record – to be a success
The approach was designed to turn around poor adoption rates faced by the e-health records scheme since it went live in 2012.
The trials wrapped up at the end of October, with 1.9% of the 971,000 individuals involved in the trial – equal to 22,420 people – asking not to have a record created for them.
“The trials evaluation report is currently being considered by the government and will inform future government decisions for bringing forward the benefits of the My Health Record nationally, including whether to adopt an opt-out system nationally,” said a spokesperson for the Health Department.
Around 706,000 individuals have voluntarily registered to the My Health Record system since March last year, bringing the total number of people with an e-health record to 4.32 million.
* Have you signed up for e-health? How has it worked for you while travelling? Comment below.
As full time travellers (9yrs.) we thought this was a wonderful idea. So we tried to join up at the beginning. But our “health professionals” were not interested. To hard,to expensive and NO support from Gov. software suppliers etc,etc.We really hope they get their S@#t together and make it work.
Yes, we joined when it was first introduced. However when we checked there was very little on it. We checked with our local Dr. who said that she hadn’t had time to implement the process and wasn’t all that interested, it was too difficult to access,was little or no support from the Gov’t.
We went back to our local GP 2 years into our trip, and found that they were now “advocating” this for all patients. Wouldn’t do it when we first asked about it. Now it is happening., But they suggested that we may have to add additional information as we travel and use other Doctors.
Have been signed up on e-health for the last 4 years, have attended 2 separate medical centers in that time and neither use the system. All I can retrieve is description of scrips issued by my chemist.
Mike