MY HEALTH RECORD: HOW YOU CAN PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL MEDICAL RECORDS!

 HOW YOU CAN PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL MEDICAL RECORDS! 

 Did you know that from October this year, over 900,00 medical professionals and 12,000 organizations and companies will have access to all of your personal medical information and data? Now I'm a massive fan of technology and using technology to make things more efficient and better, but the My Health record has got me seriously concerned after doing more research into it. In this Blog, I share with you upfront my recommendations as well as the supporting evidence and the facts that you need to know about this program before you make a decision. Stay tuned to find out more. Hi there, Xaam, the founder and head insurance expert here at True Pride. I bring you out Blog like this one on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday all-around insurance to try and help make that easier for you. So if you're new here, consider subscribing. Now normally, I'd wait until the end of the blog to make my recommendation but I'm gonna tell you upfront, my suggestion when it comes to My Health record is for everybody to opt-out until such time that you've done the research into this program and work out the exact reason why this might suit you and find out the information that you need to know to make an informed decision.

 

 I'll include all the links that you need to opt-out below so that you can follow the process and get this done easily. Now to start with, let's have a look at what the actual My Health Record Program is. The idea of the My Health Record Program is to give access to your personal medical information viewed online from anywhere at any time. In theory, this sounds like a great idea for those people that have moved interstate, traveling around, in an emergency, all the details around your allergies, medication, blood test results, all those sorts of things will be available to be viewed by the treating specialists to help make a more informed decision.

 

 You have control over who can access your information. You also can review the information that's provided, be notified when a specialist looks at your information, and also add some personal notes about the results and test results you've had in the past. My Health Record is what's known as an opt-out process which means that if you don't do anything about this in the time that they've given you, you'll be created a My Health Record whether you like it or not. So what's contained in your My Health Record and what's available online? So let's jump across to the My Health Record website and have a look at the information that's contained on your file. So the first thing is information from healthcare providers, so that's an overview of your health uploaded by a doctor, its called health summary. Discharge summaries from hospitals, reports from tests, and scans like blood tests and that sorta thing. Medications that your doctors prescribed you and referral letters from your doctors. There's also information from Medicare. Medicare and pharmaceutical benefits scheme information, organ donation decisions, immunizations, and also you can add information to your records well. So contact numbers, current medications, allergies, all that sorta thing that are there, too. So now that we've had a look at what it is and what's in it, let's have a look at some of the concerns that are being thrown around, and if you've seen any of the media reports lately, the Minister for Health, Greg Hunt has been slammed publicly for the program and there have also been some other things like this have been implemented around the world that has also had some major concerns. 

 

The common thing for concerns comes down to privacy. So let's have a look at that one first and the major concern about this when I was doing the research was how long the privacy policy for the My Health Record is. Ben Grub published an article in the Sydney morning, Harold, on the 31st of July that went through some of the privacy policy concerns that he had and how long the actual privacy policy was for My Health Record. He compared this with other major privacy policy such as Google, Facebook, ATO, Commonwealth Bank, and even My Gov, to show that the My Health Record's privacy policies close to 8,000 words. Now the next point that he raised was the fact that most Australians don't read the Terms and Conditions with about 70%of Australians, either never reading the Terms and Conditions, or only reading a few of the Terms and Conditions. So combine the two with the longest privacy policy and the fact that not many people are reading them, I do have major concerns about the fact that people are getting into something that they don't know what they're agreeing to. A recent report from the Office of the Australian information Center shows that 25% of all breach notices come from the health sector. In 2014, the NHS over in Britain tried a similar style program to this called: Care.Data. This program was put on hold and further scrapped in 2016 altogether. It came out afterward that the information that was provided in Care.Data had been sold off to insurers during the process. With an expected 900,000 medical professionals who can access your information, along with 12,000 companies, it's a real concern, even around the issue of human error that could arise from such things as uploading records to the wrong person, making a mistake with some of your records, and just doing something that is a genuine mistake.

 

 So my recommendation for this is to opt out until such time that these kinks have been ironed out. And to do this, I'll just walk you through the process for doing that now. You have until the 15th of October to opt-out of the My Health Record Program. To do this, there are a few different ways, but the easiest way to do that is by going online and registering your intention to opt-out of the program. Documentation that you'll need to prove who you are to opt-out of this program are things like your Medicare card, your driver's license, your passport, those sorta things just to be able to identify yourself to be able to opt-out the program. You can call the hotline as well which will allow you to opt-out over the phone. Given the current wait times, I just checked the website today are around four minutes and fourteen minutes for more complex calls, going online is going to be a lot easier. Also, I'd anticipate the closer we get to that 15th of October deadline, the more those wait times will blow out, and the longer it will take you to opt-out over the phone. So if you can, jump online and make sure you opt-out if that's the decision that you wanna take. I think in theory, a central source of data that makes it easier for us to access all of our information no matter where we go is a good idea. I mean, I've moved around multiple times, I've had different doctors, and pulling in that data for an insurance application would make things a lot easier than having to remember it all. But until the kinks have been ironed out,