native pepper wrote: ↑Fri Nov 09, 2018 3:10 pm
Decided to opt out after talking to a couple of others,
IMO, for what it's worth .... probably a wise decision.
A year or three back my wife was working for the GP practice where my GP is. The practice was struggling financially following the death of one of the GP's. Wife suggested I sign up for the 'My Health Record' as each patient who did so helped the practice's income. Until then I had not been overkeen on the idea, but in the interests of keeping my wife employed I convinced myself that it would be useful to have a My Health Record once we commenced full time travel. The reality is, however, as others have described in this thread, quite different. The amount of work for a practice to undertake to get each patient's history into their My health Record is phenomenal, & the reality is that it doesn't happen. In my case there is a record of medication prescribed, along with dates since signing up, but that is pretty much it! Enough for other government departments to ensure I'm not a doctor shopping drug addict, but *nothing* whatsoever which will be of any use to me. I had thought that having a good record of past illness/conditions, surgery, allergies & drug reactions etc which a GP anywhere in the country could access should I rock up to their surgery sounded very useful, but it just isn't like that despite any government rhetoric suggesting otherwise. Twice whilst travelling I have seen medicos & told them that I had a My Health record. One in Tassie tried to access it, but was unable to, & one up here in Broome accessed it, but found nothing more than my list of medications. Result for me was the need to go through the process of a full interview to give a medical history, a 'long consultation' - for which I had to pay extra, just to get a referral locally because the hospital weren't prepared to accept a written referral I had carried with me from my GP in Victoria. So they had to 're-invent the wheel' at my expense. Government will blame those who are supposed to input the info into the My Health Records whilst failing to fund them for the enormous amount of extra time to do it. I must look into whether it's possible to 'opt out' once you're in.
I convinced the Doc to certify that I was still safe to drive, 
by explaining to him that I knew when I shouldn't drive & SWMBO would take the wheel.