On Saturday May 11th, coreplus attended The South Eastern Medical Local Allied Health Providers eHealth Expo which was held at the Ramada Encore in Dandenong. 

The South Eastern Melbourne Medicare Local has around 400 primary healthcare providers (encompassing pharmacists, dental and all other allied health providers) and 427 primary care clinics. South Eastern Melbourne Medicare Local is one of 17 eHealth Support Hubs and provides services to the Bayside Medicare Local, Gippsland Medicare Local and Frankston-Mornington Peninsula Medicare Local.

The objective of this expo was to provide Allied Health Professionals with an increased understanding of eHealth, including learning more about Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), Secure Messaging and Medicare Health Professionals Online Services (HPOS) portal.

Overall the main benefit of eHealth is it removes the need to process paper-based health documents which means:

– No paper records

– Faster Processing

– Easier access to patient health information & history

The expo was filled with presentations from secure messaging vendors and gave the opportunity for attendees to ask lots of questions. We had a chance to speak with the Allied health community and understand what eHealth means to them. This enables coreplus to continue to provide Allied Health Professionals with Australia’s leading online ‘software as a service’ patient and practice management software accessible from anywhere, any time.

Do you have to be e-Health ready?

In short, NO, not yet!…there is no deadline on eHealth compliance for Allied health Professionals as at today that we’re aware of.

What does e-Health ready mean?

E-Health ready is a term being used by Medicare Locals, NEHTA and the government to describe a number of electronic health data management & interoperability standards that are designed to centralise patient health information via the Personally Controlled Electronic eHealth Record System (PCEHR).  It relates specifically to clinical documentation, electronic prescriptions, secure messaging delivery and integrating with the government PCEHR systems.

Currently, General Practices and Specialists are being offered incentives from the government to adopt software/ systems that are conformant with the government e-Health agenda, see ePIP http://www.nehta.gov.au/our-work/implementation-and-adoption/registration-support or RACGP http://www.racgp.org.au/your-practice/e-health/ehealthrecords/epip/ 

There are no practice incentives for Allied Health of any other health providers as at today.  This is something that we’re not particular happy about as our focus is on Allied Health providers and we’re keen to see our government do more for this sector and start to offer similar financial support and incentives to allow you to operate better practice managements systems like coreplus and it’s add on partners.

Although Allied Health providers do not need to be e-Health ready, coreplus is currently working on becoming eHealth compliant  to continue to support Allied Health Professionals Australia wide.

Our Road Map in this area is not very long and therefore we want you to know that by the time the government decides to impose e-Health readiness on you, by using coreplus you will have already met all the technical requirements and not need to do anything further to be e-Health ready.

It might pay to have a look into the Health Identifier for you as an individual provider and for your practice as an organisation…see Medicare’s Healthcare Identifier Service http://www.medicareaustralia.gov.au/provider/health-identifier/

We are working actively with the NEHTA, Human Services and Medicare Locals to give you the most advance online practice management software including being e-Health ready.  Continue to subscribe for further updates in this area and refer our blog to your colleagues to ensure we all stay completely up to date with what’s happening in e-Health.

Also, please comment below as we can effectively be a sort of representative body to you and our other subscribers and are building relationships with all the major e-Health departments so we can act as a vehicle to voice any of your thoughts/ concerns and feelings.