Concept of Operations: Relating to the introduction of a Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record System
8.4 Change and adoption
The successful implementation and benefits realisation of a national PCEHR System will require individuals and healthcare providers to be motivated and appropriately supported to contribute to and use the system. This is a two-way relationship, as the quality of the underlying PCEHR System and the information contained in it will also play a critical role in driving stakeholder take-up and support of the PCEHR System.
Indeed, the costs and benefits for the diverse set of stakeholders (including individuals, healthcare providers and organisations) will differ, and will change over time. Therefore the change and adoption approach needs to address not only how to motivate people to register for and adopt the PCEHR, but most ultimately how to change their delivery of healthcare and/or experience of healthcare as a result, and realise the potential benefits.
Given the requirement for a voluntary participation model, meaningful adoption will not be achieved without a deliberate strategy of engagement with the healthcare sector to drive awareness of the PCEHR capabilities and support the change required to embed their use into clinical practice. While national coordination of change and adoption efforts will be required, engagement must also occur at the grass-roots level to ensure the PCEHR System is locally relevant and to ensure realisation of benefits.
While many of the change and adoption activities will be undertaken and managed at local and regional levels across the Australian healthcare system, these will be conducted within a nationally agreed strategy. There is a need for an overarching framework and central coordination of those devolved change and adoption activities to ensure consistency and alignment between national, regional and local activities. These include national awareness and education campaigns, the establishment of national PCEHR stakeholder reference groups and the creation of stakeholder adoption support regimes.
The change and adoption strategy will build on existing knowledge and engagement forums. Much work has already been completed in conjunction with industry bodies, consumer networks, clinical reference groups, round tables and lead implementation sites. As the strategy is designed and implemented, mechanisms such as NEHTA’s clinical networks and the events like the 2010 e-health Conference will continue to provide critical touch points with the community.
The national change and adoption activities will focus on communication and engagement, in the context of broader support for change management.
A change and adoption partner will support this activity (see Section 8.3).
