The Australian Digital Health Agency is advising flood affected people about how digital health can help them during current flooding events.
Medication Information is available - If you've been affected by the recent floods and can't access your medicines or medication information, if your medicines have been destroyed, electronic prescriptions and telehealth appointments offer a good solution.
Telehealth appointments, either phone or video calls, are an excellent alternative to attending in person.
Electronic prescriptions can be sent immediately via text message or email.
People can forward their electronic prescription to a carer or direct to their local pharmacy or even use a consumer medication management app to request new medications.
If you can't get to your usual pharmacy, another pharmacist with your permission can use the information in My Health Record to help you get what you need.
You'll need to provide your Medicare number.
If you have any trouble accessing your My Health Record or even setting it up, there is a dedicated
My Health Record Help line on 1800 723 471. It is available 24 hours, 7 days a week.
If you need to check your own medication, or that of a loved one, you can access My Health Record at https://my.gov.au
The Agency recognises that this information may not be useful to those impacted by a complete outage.
Background:
As at 23 March 2022 more than 45 million electronic prescriptions have been issued, as healthcare providers and patients see the benefits of going digital.
More than 38,000 prescribers - GPs and nurse practitioners - have issued electronic prescriptions to patients and more than 98 per cent of all community pharmacies around the country are dispensing them.
Telehealth - Telehealth - Between 13 March 2020 and 27 March 2022, 101.8 million telehealth services have been delivered to 17.1 million patients. 92,658 practitioners have now used telehealth services
My Health Record - There were more than 23.3 million people with a My Health Record in February 2022 and 96 per cent of those records have data in them. The volume of records with data in them has grown by more than 2 million in the last year and 62,000 in the last month.
My Health Record contains useful clinical information including Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicine and prescribe and dispense records automatically entered and other useful clinical information that helps healthcare providers provide you with optimum care. Don't forget to ask your healthcare providers to upload other important additional information to your record.
There were 349 million medicine documents in the system, uploaded by GPs and pharmacies.
There were 235 million clinical documents in the system, uploaded by providers like hospitals, pathologists and radiologists.
Public hospital viewing of My Health Record has more than doubled in the past 12 months compared to the previous 12 months.
