My Health Record

My Health Record for Private Practice

This year, all Australians will receive My Health Record, unless they advise AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Authority) that they do not wish to be included.

The My Health Record system can transform quality, experience and value in Australia’s healthcare system through a range of important benefits.

HOW DOES THIS IMPACT PRACTITIONERS

The only way that an individual can access My Health Record is via a practitioner so it’s important to be familiar with the benefits and to be able to answer questions.

For your patients and clients, My Health Records will allow important health information to be kept together in one place that is accessible anytime by their authorised healthcare providers, including in a medical emergency.

As more people use My Health Record and information in the system grows, it will help support clinical decision-making, decrease your search time for relevant information and improve continuity of care.

HOW CAN MY HEALTH RECORD IMPROVE HEALTHCARE?

A significant proportion of medication errors that lead to harmful medication safety incidents and Adverse Drug Events (ADE) may be preventable through increased accessibility to patient information, such as that provided by My Health Record. Evidence suggests that:

2% to 3% of hospital admissions are caused by medication errors (230,000 per year at a cost of $1.2 billion annually) (1)(2)
approximately 10% of patients seeing a general practitioner report experiencing an ADE in the last 6 months (1)
there may be an overall rate of 2 medication errors for every 3 patients at the time of admission to hospital (2)
there is approximately 1 error per 10 medication administrations in a hospital (2)
12% to 13% of discharge summaries contain medication errors (2 per patient). (2)

ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND PEOPLE ABOUT THEIR CARE

Access to information via My Health Record will enable self-management and reduce clinicians’ time necessary to perform several information-led tasks, freeing up productivity for more critical activities. Evidence suggests that:

enabling self-management will save $1,300 to $7,515 per patient per year, and significantly lower hospital re-admission rates (1)
13.6% of visits had important clinical information missing in primary care (3)
in 57.3% of visits, clinicians believed the missing information was outside their clinical system. (3)

My Health Record offers an electronic summary of an individual’s key health information that can be shared securely online between the individual and registered healthcare providers involved in their care to support improved decision making and continuity of care.

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