NSW throws some serious money at digital health

The NSW state government has bitten the bullet and invested heavily upgrading digital health systems

NSW will inject more than half a billion dollars in digital systems to bring patient health records, medications management and the sharing of pathology results into the 21st century.

NSW treasurer Dominic Perrottet said the $536 million outlay over eight years reflected the position of e-health as the “most important revolution in healthcare”, adding the investment would lift efficiency.

Specific spending items include $236 million for digital patient records, to ensure patient records are easy to read, instantly accessible and accurate, and to extend the state’s electronic medications management (eMeds) program. The full roll-out of eMeds would bring a significant advance in medications management to assure patient safety, eHealth NSW CEO and CIO Zoran Bolevich told The Medical Republic.

“We’ll move from 13 hospitals with 4,500 beds now live with eMeds to 178 hospitals with almost 22,000 beds,” he said.

In another key initiative, NSW will extend its lead in digitising pathology test results so they can be accessed by clinicians anywhere in the state’s public health system and shared to the national My Health Record.

“In April, NSW became the first state or territory to feed public-hospital pathology results into My Health Record,” Mr Bolevich said.

“The new funds in the latest NSW budget will complete integration of the four NSW Pathology Hubs to our HealtheNet Clinical Repository, enabling clinicians to view pathology results quickly and easily state-wide.”

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said research showed electronic systems could cut medication errors by more than 50%.

“Nearly all patients who are hospitalised will take at least one medication during their stay,” Mr Hazzard said.

“Given the sheer volume dispensed, mistakes are a very real possibility. Notes might be illegible, errors can be made transcribing medication charts, or charts can be lost, but this technology helps ensure patients get the right medication at the right time.”

As most clinical decisions hinged on the outcomes of pathology results, quick and easy digital access to them across the public health system was important, Mr Bolevich said.

The results are also passed on from the state’s HealtheNet repository to the national MyHR for the benefit of community clinicians and patients.

“This adds to the existing capability for the provision of electronic discharge summaries – in the last financial year alone, NSW Health provided 900,000 electronic discharge summaries to GPs,” he said.

“Work is under way to add medical imaging reports and discharge medications to this list.”

The bulk of the 2017-18 eHealth funding is $286 million to expand a “whole-of-system digital platform” which so far has added advanced telehealth capabilities to regional and remote hospitals, among other initiatives.

Of the digital health record funding, money is also earmarked for new work to link the NSW Ambulance and emergency department electronic medical record systems.