South Australians will receive better health services as a result of new laws proposed by the Marshall Liberal Government which will require private providers to share crucial patient details with public health experts, within a tight confidentiality regime.
Minister for Health and Wellbeing Stephen Wade said the Liberal State Government was delivering on its promise to provide better health services for South Australians.
South Australian private health facilities currently operate under a voluntary reporting scheme of de-identified data.
This means that patient movements and outcomes between the private and public sectors are unknown - giving public health experts no oversight on mortality rates, re-admissions, or total length of stay for pathways in and across different hospitals.
The private hospital sector contributes about 30% of total patient days in South Australia.
Sectorwide data will allow us to see the whole journey of patients and support continuous improvement of care pathways.
The sharing of identified patient data will also provide a boost for the state's medical research sector.
The Marshall Government has also established a sector-wide health governance committee to enable faster access to cutting-edge medical breakthroughs ands, and will align South Australia with a number of other Australian jurisdictions.
It stems from the recommendations of a health and medical research sector r provide oversight to the management of grant finances.
This proposed legislation will build on current voluntary arrangements for sharing of de-identified data, provide clarity and assurance for both public and private provider and will be developed in consultation with the private health sector, and in particular private hospitals.
Importantly, private health facilities will not be asked to provide any more data than public hospitals do, and linked patient data will be covered by the same stringent privacy and confidentiality regime that currently protects patient data in the public health sector.
