The National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) is offer funding from a pool of up to $500,000 (ex GST) to Australian private hospital groups to begin integrating their systems with the Personally Controlled Electronic Health record (PCEHR). 

Applications are being invited from private hospital organisations seeking a funding contribution to support their deployment of a (PCEHR) viewing and/or clinical document upload capability within their hospital facilities by 30 June 2015.

“Viewing the PCEHR will allow hospital clinicians to directly view a consenting patient’s important health information where available from primary and community care settings – in particular, the patient’s Shared Health Summary, prescriptions and community pharmacy dispense records, public hospital discharge summaries and additional clinical documents as they are added to the PCEHR in the future (e.g. pathology and diagnostic imaging reports).

“Knowing that such documents are being viewed within acute settings will further encourage the creation of these documents within the primary and community care settings.

“Additionally, private hospital organisations uploading relevant clinical documents – such as discharge summaries or medication records for example - to the PCEHR system will encourage further meaningful use of the system.”

NEHTA says the ability to view a patient’s PCEHR and upload clinical documents to it is already in place in over 260 public hospitals and health centres across Australia. 

“As a result, there is a high degree of understanding of what is required for a successful PCEHR implementation in a hospital setting, as well as a range of implementation support offerings which are available from NEHTA to private hospitals to help ensure successful deployment occurs.”

As part of NEHTA’s funding arrangements with the Commonwealth Department of Health, a total funding pool of up to $500,000 (ex GST) is available for the programme.  These funds are intended to assist private hospital organisations accelerate their eHealth readiness, and are not intended to cover the entirety of eHealth implementation costs.

Enquiries can be directed to privatehospital.rip@nehta.gov.au