Australian Greens Additional Comments

Australian Greens Additional Comments

Australian Greens Comments

1.1       Australian Greens make the following comments and additional recommendations concerning the inquiry into the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records Bill 2011.

1.2       The Greens recognise the enormous benefits of e-health and electronic health records and remain supportive of the goals of the PCEHR system.

No Access

1.3       The Greens agree, on balance, with the decision by government to drop "no access" patient controls on records in the PCEHR. However, we acknowledge the consumer stakeholder groups' concerns in this area. For instance, the Consumers Health Forum in their submission, and the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations in previous remarks have made the case that allowing patients to flag parts of the record as "no access" could increase consumer confidence in the system.

1.4       Greens Senators would like to make it clear in the bill that in the future "no access" controls could be reinstated by regulation or the System Operator.

Default Access Controls

1.5       The Australian Greens believe default access controls, which are likely to be used by the majority of PCEHR consumers, are of critical importance. As the Australian Medical Association noted, they are left up to the rules and System Operator to define. This leaves a crucial part of the implementation undefined.

1.6       It should be clear that these rules must be developed in a transparent way that involves community input. Some baseline controls could be specified in the bill. Alternatively, we accept that the default access controls are better defined in the Rules and not by the System Operator and this could be made clear.

Definitions

1.7       The questions raised by witnesses and submitters around definitions are valid. Medibank pointed out that the definition of healthcare omits preventive health and is focussed on illness. The Greens support including preventive health in this definition.

1.8       This might also help clarify the definition of healthcare provider and allow the flexibility to include preventive health professionals such as dieticians in the system in future.

Use of data in research

1.9       As noted by Medibank in their submission, the data collected in the PCEHR system as a whole could be of significant value to researchers and health planners. The Greens note that there are significant operational and privacy issues around accessing aggregate and de-identified data for research purposes.

1.10    However, given the potential value of the data to the public health community, the bill could make some provision for research uses of system data if privacy issues can be adequately addressed. Explicitly mentioning this in the bill may reduce the liability of the System Operator and encourage it to explore methods to anonymise and aggregate PCEHR data.

Australian Greens Recommend

Recommendation 1

1.1        The bill should be clear in section 15 that the ability of consumers to further protect the privacy of their data may be enhanced by the Rules or System Operator.

Recommendation 2

1.2        That section 15 (b) (ii) of the bill be amended to require the System Operator to consult (with the independent advisory council or other community representatives) in the development of default access controls.

Recommendation 3

1.3        That the definition of "healthcare" be amended to include "preventative health".

Recommendation 4

1.4        That the bill be amended to make explicit reference to the use of anonymised, aggregate data from the PCEHR system for research and public health purposes.

 

Senator Rachel Siewert
Deputy Chair
Senator Richard Di Natale
Senator for Victoria

Navigation: Previous Page | Contents | Next Page