Just how messy and unwieldy the NEHRS is going to become is illustrated by the following.
Here is part of the side-bar to access your record (note links don't work)
If you click on one of these links (and you are actually logged in and have access) you will get the following for each link.
----- Begin Document
DAVID G MORE DoB xx Feb 1949 (63 years) Sex Male IHI xxxxx 6011 8114 24xx
6 May 2012 00:00+1000 Pharmaceutical Benefits Report
START OF DOCUMENT
Pharmaceutical Benefit Items
Generic Name | ALLOPURINOL |
Brand | PROGOUT 300 |
Prescribed | Sat May 05 00:00:00 EST 2012 |
Supplied | Sun May 06 00:00:00 EST 2012 |
Form and Strength | TABLET 300MG |
Quantity | 60 |
Repeat Number | 2 |
Administrative Observations
Age when record was created 63
Document details
----- End Document.
This is just a 5-6 month display. In a few years even on just a few medicines one will be able to accumulate a heck of a large number of records. Also it needs to be remembered that each pathology test will have a similar record - assuming they make it to the record which in my case very few did.
Once you add the various shared summary record and the other planned documents (referrals and so on) it becomes clear just how unwieldy this will all become.
This whole document based approach may need a careful re-think. It makes much more sense to re-design the way information is presented - both for clinician and consumer - to make it acceptably useful.
My belief is that the root cause of the looming issue of just too many documents that are not properly organised is due to design overreach. We should have had a minimal shared EHR to start with and then move on incrementally. Sadly this is not what has happened.
The mess we have now reveals that NEHTA’s and DoHA’s job is by no means done despite claims to the contrary.
Additionally on the last two occasions I have logged on the performance of the system has been glacial.
I wonder why that might be?
David.