Govt seeks e-health reform feedback

Australians have been given until the end of the week to comment on the Government's plan to issue 16-digit Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) to all individuals and healthcare providers.

IHI's would be governed by the Healthcare Identifiers Bill, which has been under review by the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs since last Wednesday.

The Bill was introduced to Parliament last month. If passed, it would authorise the CEO of Medicare to delegate functions to support the service.

It would also cause the Privacy Act 1988 to be amended, to ensure the Healthcare Identifiers Service came under the jurisdiction of the Privacy Commissioner.

The Committee was to consider privacy safeguards in the Bill, operation of the service and access to IHIs, and how the Bill affected the national e-health agenda and electronic health records.

Stakeholders and the public were invited to submit facts, opinions, arguments and recommendations about the Bill to the Committee. No submissions have been published on the Committee's website yet.

IHIs were expected to be created by mid-year, and would be provided in addition to Medicare numbers.

The Committee planned to report on its findings on 15 March.