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My Health Record in Standards of Practice for Clinical Pharmacy Services

My Health Record is a secure online summary of an individual’s key health information, available to all Australians. Healthcare providers, such as hospital pharmacists, authorised by their healthcare organisation can access the system to view and add patient health information. Public hospitals have shown exceptional growth in use of My Health Record in 2021, with a 300% increase in prescribing and dispensing record views between October 2020 and October 2021. A recent update to the SHPA Standards of Practice for Clinical Pharmacy Services is the inclusion of a chapter on My Health Record. This provides clear guidance to hospital pharmacists on how to use My Health Record efficiently in their workflow to help with the effective treatment of their patients. It’s well known that medication discrepancies and miscommunication in clinical records can occur at any point of care, but are more significant when patients transition between care. The availability of My Health Record via hospital electronic medical records gives hospital pharmacists another resource for necessary and important patient health and medicine information. How many times have you had to systematically call community pharmacies to develop an accurate medication reconciliation? My Health Record can be used not only to see dispensed or prescribed medicines, but also to show hospital pharmacists which community pharmacies a patient visits, so they can be contacted directly. This, along with the ability to review relevant health conditions, allergies, and immunisations, means the patient’s transition into hospital care is as seamless and efficient as possible. When a patient is discharged from hospital, any updates to their medical or medicine history can be uploaded through the hospital’s discharge summary, and through a pharmacist-reconciled list of medications called the pharmacist shared medicines list (PSML). This cross-over integration between tertiary and primary care ultimately means greater visibility for the patient’s GP, community pharmacist and other healthcare providers, leading to better overall health outcomes for the patient. Further guidance is covered in the updated SOP. Privacy and security are important considerations when accessing your patient’s My Health Record and 44% of respondents in a 2020 study of pharmacists identified these issues as potential barriers to the widespread adoption of the system. Pharmacists have professional and legal obligations to protect their patients’ health information, and this is no different when interacting with My Health Record. The SOP clearly articulates the relevant state and Commonwealth privacy legislation, regulations and guidelines under the pharmacists Code of Conduct and Professional Practice Standards. Along with the guidance provided in the SOP, the SHPA and the Agency continue to develop new training resources and interactive sessions to ensure you are aware of any updates to your obligations when accessing My Health Record. Another important privacy consideration for hospital pharmacists when interacting with My Health Record is the emergency access (‘break glass’) function. Although expected use of this function is rare, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has recently updated their guidance material to ensure healthcare providers are fully aware of when they can and cannot use the feature in the treatment of their patients. The SOP summarises the key points of how pharmacists can use the emergency access function and what records need to be kept detailing the circumstances around its use. The update to the SOP is one of several educational resources and communications materials developed specifically for hospital pharmacists through an ongoing relationship with the Australian Digital Health Agency and SHPA. It provides hospital pharmacists with the necessary guidance and information to champion the system in their practice and details how they can access further education and training resources. The Agency looks forward to future partnerships with the SHPA to better support hospital pharmacists and other healthcare providers in providing beneficial patient health outcomes through use of digital technologies.