Health Ministry spending $13.9m on database

The Health Ministry is spending $13.9 million on a database to manage identification numbers for patients after finding current systems could put them at risk.

The database, which will also manage the identities of medical practitioners, will pave the way for shared health records – which will hold a summary of a person's health information that can be accessed by all clinicians and the patient themselves.

It is expected to save $4.5m in "soft" benefits – including through improved patient safety – and $1.2m in "hard" benefits – such as reduced back-office administration and system support costs – each year, according to a business case signed off by the Cabinet.

IBM has won the contract to develop the database and the ministry is seeking proposals from vendors to support and host it.

IBM healthcare practice's Cherie Kennedy said it had found several data quality issues with the existing platform supporting the National Health Index and Health Practitioner Index.

"Typically the issues are around duplicate records, and that impacts patient care. A clinician or health service provider may only be able to get one half of a patient record because there is a duplicate out there that they're not aware of."

There were also quality issues with the way certain information, such as addresses, had been entered into the system. The new system would use the existing numbers assigned to patients and practitioners but have provisions to address data quality issues, standardise address capture and prevent duplicate records being created, she said.

Project sponsor Tony Cooke said the current system was not always available, which meant practitioners sometimes had to assign patients temporary numbers and then later reconcile those with their real numbers. "That just adds complexity down the track."

National Health IT Board director Graeme Osborne said shared care records would work only if practitioners could trust the data.

"If we don't have a National Health Index and Practitioner Index that is of higher quality then it's going to make a shared record more difficult to operate. Every step of that care we want to show we know who the person was, who the provider was and where they were providing that care."

The current system was 20 years old, he said.

IBM's contract was worth "a significant part" of the $13.9m budget. The system is due to be completed by late next year. Mr Cooke said the industry had been consulted. "We've made a significant effort to make sure we're bringing the whole sector along with us."

- © Fairfax NZ News