Reports of long wait, SSO breakdown on first day of My Health Record opt out
Social media users have complained of long waiting times on the My Health Record hotline and a temporary breakdown in the single sign-on capability of the MyGov site on the first day of the three-month opt out period.
Twitter users who tried to opt out have reported receiving messages that the call centre was experiencing a high volume of calls and others have had problems verifying their identity in order to opt out online.
A spokesperson for the Australian Digital Health Agency said if consumers were not able to get through today, they can opt out over the next three months. The opt-out period ends on October 15, but consumers can still opt out or in at any time.
Posted in Australian eHealth
Tags: My Health Record
Comments
This may be misleading since that is not really true in terms of what the opt-out period was meant for; As I understand if you do not have a MyHealth Record created before 16 Jul 2018 and if you opt out before 15 Oct 2018, you will not have MyHealth Record unless you opt in later.
However if you do not opt out before 15 Oct 2018, a MyHealth Record will be created but you can "opt-out" the use of it by freezing* it, but the Record (and whatever already in it) will still exists, subject to the law of the land which of course can change.
* they call it "cancelling" but in reality it just frozen and inaccessible to you or health providers
Your Medicare billing interactions are part of their database. If you are a child, your information is on the AIR (immunisation) database, and if your pharmacy uses electronic prescribing, you are on the national Dispensing and Providing database. If you are a registered organ donor, you are on another medicare database. This is how the world works, all the MyHR does is consolidate it in one view and incorporate any uploaded clinical data.
So a frozen MyHR that hasn't been clinically accessed doesn't contain extra data about you. It contains information that has been around electronically for years, it merely consolidates it into 1 place.Your concern with data that can be accessed via the law of the land has been a fact for years. You'd also be aware that historically your medical facility had to keep your records for 7 years after you have ceased attending unless you instruct them otherwise. Longer if you have HIV and up to the age of 21 if you are younger than that (state law variations not withstanding).