In more detail
As we have previously reported, the MOH intends to, through the proposed Health Information Bill, enable the collection of patients' selected health data from healthcare providers and to allow healthcare providers to share patient information with one another in a safe and secure manner. The proposed Health Information Bill will include requirements related to the NEHR. For further details, you may refer to our previous client alerts in March 2023 and December 2023.
For primary care, public sector polyclinics, which attend to over 20% of the patient workload, are 100% on the NEHR. However, for private clinics and hospitals, which attend to about 80% and 10% of the patient workload for primary care and secondary/tertiary care respectively, there remains a considerable number of healthcare providers that have yet to use the NEHR. As such, the proposed legislation seeks to require all remaining private healthcare providers to come onto the NEHR.
The Minister has announced that such legislation is likely to be passed early next year to require all remaining private healthcare providers to come onto NEHR. This will bring the minority of private clinics and all private hospitals onto the platform.
The Minister also explained that patients who are understandably more sensitive about their medical records and do not want to share such data with other clinicians can opt out of sharing access to their data. While such an option is not encouraged by the MOH from a quality-of-care perspective, the MOH will respect the patient's choice.
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