E-health too unsexy for COAG

There will always be something more politically sexy than e-health for state governments, meaning the National E-Health Transition Authority's (NEHTA) business case for a national electronic medical record might just sit on the shelf gathering dust forever.

NEHTA has been trying to get approval for its business case since October last year, when it hoped it would go before the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). Although the authority already has funding for its operations, if its business case is passed it will have a lot more to forge forward with an expanded agenda in coordinating e-health solutions across state and federal governments.

But what happened before October? The crisis. So e-health was turned on the back burner while the states considered what to do about the economic hole the world had fallen in. If Australians asked afterwards, they could at least say they did something.

Then there was another COAG meeting in November. NEHTA got funds to keep on doing what it was doing, but again the financial conditions took top billing as examining the business case was put in the too hard basket.

In February? You guessed it. The financial crisis was still top order of the day as the state governments eyed all the money the Federal Government was putting onto the plate and was going to flow into their jurisdictions. Then the fires came. So April's COAG was all about disaster plans.

This time it's been closing the gap on indigenous living. I applaud the states for their focus on something that is obviously a problem, but at the same time, politically, dealing with the situation was going to have brownie points flowing out of everyone's ears. The problem is, there are so many more issues that the government can eye as low-lying fruit to give them political kudos. E-health doesn't stand a chance.

Until something disastrous happens that finally makes COAG decide that e-health is a political heavy weight, that business case will keep being passed by.

It shouldn't. When I have to ring two weeks in advance to have my dental records sent down to my specialist of choice, something is wrong. When someone is proscribed a medicine that they have already said to one medical provider that they are allergic to (which incidentally has also happened to me) something is wrong. E-health, and in particular, electronic medical records, is important. It should be sexy. It should be done.