There's a lot about working at the pointy end of the healthcare system that annoys GPs, but “GP to chase” test results ordered while the patient was in hospital has to be up there with the worst of them. Even when prefaced with the word “kindly”, reading a discharge summary written by a junior medical officer with a demand that the GP do the work the hospital doctors should be doing is enough to drive many of them to distraction.

While no one is saying that the My Health Record will put an end to this, the ability to see a patient's results with the click of a button or two and not have to spend time on the phone with the hospital is one of the system's selling points for GPs. Last month, SA Health joined most of the other jurisdictions in beginning to upload pathology and diagnostic imaging reports to the My Health Record from its hospitals, but in a new move SA Pathology is also doing so for tests that GPs themselves have requested from the public provider.