Issue 14
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Healthcare Identifiers explained
Healthcare identifiers (HI) are at the forefront of NEHTA’s strategic priorities, which were released in their strategic plan last week outlining how they will
fulfill their mission to lead the progression of eHealth in Australia.
The accurate identification of individuals and healthcare providers is critical in all health communication, however Australia currently has no single method
of accurately and reliably identifying the individual, the provider or the healthcare organistation. To overcome this, Medicare is constructing a
national infrastructure solution that will assign and centrally manage identifiers for individuals, providers and organisations in the healthcare sector.
All Australian residents accessing healthcare in Australia will be allocated an Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI), which is a unique 16 digit
number. The IHI is an identifier that will allow the secure transmission of an individual’s health information.
It is important to understand that no clinical or health information is stored with the IHI. The only information stored is to enable accurate identification
of individuals.
This proposed information will be:
Name
Health Identifier Number
Date of Birth
Address
The IHI is specifically designed to improve the storage, retrieval and transfer of patient information across the health sector. Therefore no matter how many
healthcare providers an individual visits, or if other details change, all information will still be uniquely linked to that individual.
NEHTA’s proposed timetable for the roll out of the IHI’s is as follows:
| December 2009 - Release 1 |
98% of Australians assigned an IHI |
| March 2010 - Release 2 |
The remaining 2% assigned an IHI |
| July 2010 |
IHI service in full operational readiness |
It is important to note that although almost all Australians will be assigned an IHI by December of this year, enabling legislation must be passed by the Government
in order for them to be used. It is anticipated that the legislation will be in place by mid 2010 to meet the timetable of a July operational readiness.
NEHTA will, however, take the opportunity to use Release 1 to begin testing the Health Identifiers with software vendors and the health community to ensure the
processes are right.
Immediate benefits that the aged care industry will achieve through the use of IHIs are:
Discharge summaries – when a patient leaves hospital their ongoing care needs can be effectively communicated to their healthcare provider.
Prescriptions – pharmacists can safely fill and electronically lodge prescriptions and monitor the range of medications a patient is receiving to ensure no
adverse effects occur.
iCare is engaged with NEHTA to ensure that our Clinical, Care and Medication Management software is tested, compliant and ready to be used with the Individual Health
Identifiers once they become operational in July next year.
Kind regards,
Chris Gray
Managing Director
 Pdf version for print.
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