Interoperability between My Health Record and the My Aged Care system may be a little closer following the announcement of funding for the Australian Digital Health Agency to work on adding aged care assessments to the MyHR as part of the new measures for in-home aged care support in the 2023 federal budget.

ADHA’s senior project manager for aged care Julie Khoury said work was expected to start in July next year on the project, and it will need a lot of analysis to understand the systems before any solution can be designed and determined.

ADHA’s aged care program for aged care, which has been funded by the Department of Health and Aged Care until July 2024 as part of the government’s response to recommendations 66 and 68 of the Royal Commission, also includes developing an aged care transfer summary for MyHR, registering aged care facilities to use the system and ongoing work with aged care software vendors to link them to the system.

Ms Khoury said the aged care transfer summary (ACTS) was in the technical delivery phase and was currently being worked on by vendor partners. It is hoped that will be finished by October this year, and would be accompanied by another industry offer to facilitate the implementation of the ACTS by vendors.

The ACTS will be a new clinical document that will be uploaded by residential aged care facilities to support the transition of care of a resident from facility to hospital. ADHA is also looking at undertaking a piece of work to understand the current state of discharge summaries and any opportunities for improvement so residential aged care facilities can view them.

ADHA is working with 13 vendors on connecting their systems to the My Health Record, with three having achieved conformance, through the existing industry offer.

It is also continuing work with the Aged Care Industry IT Council on assessing the digital maturity of residential aged care facilities and developing an assessment framework and self-assessment tools to support the sector. Consultation on developing clinical information system standards for aged care software is also about to begin.

ADHA is also working with the primary health networks to get RACFs registered for My Health Record. This involves promotion and awareness campaigns, which are currently underway in Victoria and NSW, followed by Queensland and WA in the second half of the year, South Australia and Tasmania in the first half of next year and then the ACT and Northern Territory.