Module 2 – Response | Patient consultations and considerations
Utilising My Health Record
My Health Record may be a useful tool to utilise during emergencies and disasters as it can provide access to a patient's key health information, helping to improve decision making and continuity of care.
My Health Record can be particularly helpful when consulting with patients that are unfamiliar to you or your practice. Particularly useful features of My Health Record in emergencies may include:
- the medicines preview table, containing a list of all of the person’s medicines, including dose and directions from prescription records (this may be helpful in an emergency when you don't have access to your original prescriptions),
- the allergies and adverse reactions table.
Of course, the usefulness of a person’s My Health Record will vary depending on how much and what type of information has been entered into the tool prior to the event at hand. We encourage GPs to get into the habit of uploading to their patients’ My Health Records so that if their patients become displaced during an event, other clinicians will be able to access their important health information.
Where your practice’s GPs consult with displaced patients during an event, or people that are unfamiliar to them and your practice, it can be beneficial to upload to the patients’ My Health Records. However, this will only be possible if your practice has access to its usual computers and utilities.
Healthcare providers are able to override a person’s access controls to view their health information by activating the My Health Record ‘’ function. While this function should not be used without good reason, it can be helpful in emergency situations where a person is in a serious condition and access their My Health Record may help their recovery.
Bulk billing
While not always feasible, you may wish to consider your patients’ capacity to pay for your services during an event. You may decide, at your discretion, to expand the number of patients that you bulk bill for as a way of supporting your community during or in the aftermath of a disaster.
Recent increases in bulk billing incentives for certain groups may make this achievable for some practices. However, many practices may find that doing so will only add to their loss of income leading to an unsustainable practice. It is important to remember that the optimal aim is to keep your practice doors open to support the community during a potentially long recovery phase.