The Council of Australian Governments met in Brisbane yesterday to consider Australia's health reform agenda.

As part of their deliberations COAG:
+ Re-affirmed its commitment to the introduction in 2010 of national healthcare identifier numbers
+ Agreed to release for further consultation draft legislation for establishing the healthcare identifiers (noting that further work had been done to clarify and strengthen patient privacy, including limiting the use of information, clearly outlining who has access to information and providing penalties for any misuse of information).
+ Agreed a National Partnership on e-Health, setting out the objectives and scope for the Healthcare Identifier Service to be operated by Medicare Australia, as well as relevant governance, legislative, administrative and financial arrangements. The identifiers are an important building block for the future introduction of a patient-controlled Individual Electronic Health Record.

Two additional documents:
+ National Partnership on Health Services
+ National Partnership on Health Infrastructure

See the full COAG communiqué for details of all matters covered.
The National Partnership documents on e-Health, Health Services and Health Infrastructure are available for download from www.coag.gov.au/coag_meeting_outcomes/2009-12-07/index.cfm


In a related announcement, NEHTA has released three Privacy Impact Assessments relating to the Healthcare Identifier Service along with the recommendations and its responses.
+ Mallesons Stephen Jaques PIA into Individual Healthcare Identifiers recommendations and NEHTA's reponse
+ Clayton Utz PIA into the Unique Healthcare Identifiers Program recommendations and NEHTA's responses
+ Galexia Preliminary PIA regarding the Unique Healthcare Identifier Program recommendations and NEHTA's responses
All 3 Privacy Impact Assessments and NEHTA's responses are available for download from www.nehta.gov.au/connecting-australia/privacy/pias