The health minister announced a 24/7 digital service for people to be able to book online medical appointments. Photo: 123RF
A Christchurch GP says clinicians at the new 24/7 digital service for medical appointments will be flying blind if they do not have the right information system backing them up.
The health minister announced in March the plan to provide better access to video consultations with New Zealand-registered clinicians.
Les Toop, an Emeritus Professor in the Department of General Practice at Otago University and a Christchurch GP, told Nine to Noon that a nationwide system allowing health records to be shared was needed to be able to provide safe health care to someone unknown to the clinician.
He said there were few details about how the digital service would work, but he had some concerns that if it was not managed well it could seriously damage an already stressed health system.
Toop said he thought it was optimistic to think it would be up and running by mid-year as indicated by the government.
He said, for one, a digital shared electronic health records system would be essential if clinicians were to provide safe health care to someone not known to them.
"It gets worse if you think about people with multi-morbidities, so older people with several things wrong with them, and on multiple medications and they have an intercurrent illness, they are absolutely flying blind."
Digital Health Association chair Tony Wai told Nine to Noon there were already some shared electronic systems in Canterbury, Auckland and Wellington, but a national network was needed.
He said he understood work on a national network was underway.
"The challenge is the system is quite fragmented and we have practice management systems which hold a lot of that data and in order for shared records to be transferred out of primary care into a more shared care platform it has been identified there has to be relative agreement and contractual alignment between vendors who operate the systems in primary care, and equally between Health NZ to facilitate this to occur.
"It can be done it is just a matter of ensuring we have the right regulatory, as well as contractual framework to make it occur."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
