Seeking participation: My Health Record registration RACFs

The Australian Digital Health Agency is grateful of your support in recruiting participants for the Aged Care Program’s My Health Record Registration pilot.

Seeking your participation: My Health Record registration pilot

In responding to a number of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency) is delivering an Aged Care Program with the aim of better connecting the aged and health care sectors.

Part of this Program is focussed on supporting residential aged care providers to connect to My Health Record, either via the National Provider Portal or through conformant software. To ensure the registration support, approach, and materials are fit-for-purpose and genuinely helpful ahead of the broader rollout to the sector, the Agency is initially conducting a pilot with a small number of providers, and we’re after volunteers to join this pilot.

What am I signing up for?
The pilot will run for two months commencing mid-August 2022, during which you will receive dedicated one-on-one support from a My Health Record Registration Support Officer, and access to step-by-step guides and training materials to help you navigate the registration process. More information on connecting to My Health Record is available on the website.

The objective of the pilot is to collect feedback on the registration process, support and education materials. The feedback will guide updates to or creation of new support materials, or deletion of existing materials, and improvements to the registration support prior to working with the whole residential aged care sector for registration through to June 2024.

What is the commitment?
They’d like your commitment to the two month timeframe from mid-August through to mid-October, to provide the time to navigate the registration process – requiring organisational decisions (authorising signatories and individuals) and facility implementation (clinical workforce on the ground).

They’re also keen to connect with your registration contact regularly during the pilot timeframe, via a 30 minute virtual meeting every week. This will enable the timely sharing of feedback and allow them to respond to barriers as rapidly as we can.

Who needs to be involved?
The registration process may involve a few people within your organisations – you’ll need a PRODA account if you don’t already have one, and this requires an ‘authorising signatory’ to set up. Additionally, you will need to allocate the following roles to be compliant with My Health Record legislation:

• RO (RESPONSIBLE OFFICER): The RO has the authority to act on behalf of the organisation and has primary responsibility for ensuring that the organisation and its employees comply with the relevant legislation, policies and regulations.
  • The RO for large organisations could be for instance, CEO or COO.
  • The RO for small organisations is usually the business owner.
• OMO (Organisation Maintenance Officer): The OMO of an organisation is an individual who is registered with the Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) and acts on behalf of the organisation in its day-to-day administrative dealings with the HI Service and the My Health Record System. (Organisations can have multiple OMO’s).
  

What’s in it for me?
Not only will participating in the pilot provide you with direct access to dedicated support to help you navigate the registration process, but by registering your facility, you will have access to My Health Record, which provides a safe and convenient way for your residents and their health care team to share important clinical information, including vaccination and immunisation information, allergies, medications, pathology and radiology results, and shared health summaries.

Where do I sign up?
If you’re interested in participating, or they’ve piqued your interest at least, please make contact with Tracey McGrory at the Agency by sending an email.