My Health Record in emergency departments

The largest research project about My Health Record in emergency departments (EDs) has been published. It follows on from the latest CHIME-GP Report and covers almost 130,000 patients across 4 hospitals and states, involving more than 1,000 ED staff.

The Australian Digital Health Agency engaged the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care to investigate what ED clinicians need to support their use of the My Health Record system and how content can be applied to clinical decision-making. 

Led by a senior emergency physician, the project found that the My Health Record system is a vital tool that can improve the quality of decision-making by ED clinicians to support safer patient care. Of those who accessed the system, more than a third of ED clinicians stated that their clinical decision-making had been influenced by My Health Record content.

Other findings from the project include:

• Patients with the most complex healthcare needs often had the most content in their My Health Record. 
• ED clinicians considered medication-related documents and diagnostics tests as high-value content. 
• ED clinicians want to see electrocardiograms, advance care plans and specialist (or outpatient) letters in My Health Record.
• Improved and intuitive My Health Record viewing platforms, which enhance usability and on-screen presentation of content, would improve ED clinicians’ user experience.

A national My Health Record adoption model and checklist emerged from the project findings. Many of the 30 recommendations contained in the report have already been implemented with longer term recommendations under consideration.

Real-life case studies throughout the report show the potential system-wide benefits of My Health Record, especially if scaled nationally to the 8 million patients seen in Australian EDs each year. 

It is expected that stakeholders, particularly hospitals, will leverage project findings to inform local evaluative studies of how their clinicians use the My Health Record system.

It’s interesting to note that we have now seen a huge increase in viewing as hospitals realise the benefits of having information in My Health Record, with viewing increasing by 160% in public and 93% in private hospitals. Public hospital viewing of documents uploaded by other healthcare providers has more than doubled from 700,000 to 1.8 million (from June 2021 to June 2022). Increased My Health Record use by clinicians will continue to support the delivery of safe, high-quality patient care.